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Move My Family to the United States

"While I do not feel this is a critical move for the welfare of my children, I feel it as a duty of love, having promised my wife when we married that I would move us all to the U.S. by the time the oldest child hit middle school, in order that they would not go through the South Korean public education system. My wife is South Korean and believes the public system here delivers more harm than good. I tried hard to get my children to learn Korean, enrolling them in schools and private classes taught by South Koreans (piano, swimming, in-line skating, art, go game) but Korean never really took root in their minds. Hence, they are left with only English as a language through which they might gain an education. Thanks to this language barrier, heretofore my children have done nearly all of their academic learning on their own, in English, using books I bought for them. It would be nice if they got some peers, friends, in a public school, who could speak English and thus communicate with my children on a deeper level. They do play with South Korean children, every day in fact, but their verbal interaction is limited to a rather superficial level. Deepening of friendship, particularly during adolescence, requires more language facility than this. So, we're planning to move, working now to get an immigrant visa for my wife. The problem is that I earn only 65% of the poverty level for a family of 7 (It's honestly more than we need, so thrifty are we.), and the U.S. Embassy does not count amassed capital into the equation which permits me to serve as a sponsor to my wife. We will continue to try to persuade the staff at the Embassy to consider several other relevant factors which should reasonably predict that my wife is rather unlikely to become a financial burden to the U.S. government. Furthermore, it does not seem right that the U.S. government should mandate a formal education for children under age 15, and yet refuse to allow the mother of my five American children to move with them, particularly when she has never committed a crime, has no debt, and nearly has two master's degrees now (the second almost finished ... in ESL, from an American university). We'll see, and continue praying about this one. It has to be on my list, a labor of love central to the needs of my family. "

Completed on 04/22/2011

"North Carolina is not so bad about cracking down on people who do not like public schooling. We home school here, as do about 6000 other families in these two counties, Wake and Johnston. It is quite pleasant . I am studying at the local seminary, while my wife just finished her second master's degree yesterday, giving a presentation and defending her final research proposal. "

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