January 10, 2007  

Visa causes odyssey for Queen Creek couple








By Art Martori, Tribune
January 10, 2007
Gerlinde Foltin had a pained look in her eyes last week as she opened a passport from her native Austria. Scrawled across the last page was a note from a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent that reads “Subject required B2 visa for further entries.”
It means the 52-year-old Austrian woman will have to leave her immaculate Queen Creek home and her husband by Sunday, or become one of millions of immigrants living illegally in the United States.

When Gerlinde goes back to Austria, she won’t have a job waiting and she’ll have to stay with family members who have seen her only sporadically during the past three years. But she’s planning to go back to Vienna, nonetheless, and wait for the U.S. to review her visa application, a process that could take another two years.

“I don’t know if our marriage will survive,” Foltin said in broken English.

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