By LARA JAKES JORDAN
WASHINGTON -- True love waits for no one -- except maybe the Homeland Security Department.
Red tape has put wedding bells on hold for about 10,000 U.S. citizens seeking visas for their foreign brides and grooms as the department creates new paperwork.
The form change was required as part of a law, enacted in March, to protect foreign mail-order brides from abusive American spouses. But Homeland Security missed its deadline three months ago, putting the visa applications of thousands of law-abiding lovers in limbo.
The department said Tuesday it would send out additional forms that should satisfy the new law.
The bureaucratic delay has trashed wedding plans for many couples.
"We were ready to get married this year, but I can't really make a date until we get the approval," said Bill Hall, 41, a construction foreman from Burlington, Vt. He applied two months ago for a visa for his fiancee, Debbie, to emigrate from Canada with her two sons.
He said his application, sent to Homeland Security in April, "never got approved. It's just sitting there."
The tale of 10,000 belated nuptials illustrates a bureaucratic response to what all agree is a well-intentioned law to protect women.
Advocates estimate that as many as 15,000 foreign women annually meet their American husbands through for-profit marriage brokers.
Spurred by stories of foreign women, largely from Eastern Europe and Asia, being abused or murdered by their U.S. husbands, Congress in December approved new protections for mail-order brides. They included amending the application form for so-called fiancee visas with two new questions: Whether the couple met through an international marriage broker, and had the U.S. citizen ever been accused of a violent crime or convicted of three or more alcohol- or drug-related crimes.
Homeland Security Department/U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, www.uscis.gov/graphics/index.htm
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