I first met my fiance Mehraneh about two and a half years ago at college in New York, where we were both studying Landscape Architecture at the time. Ever since the first time I met her, I was deeply enthralled by her kindness, charm, and intelligence. I asked her out on a date, and more and more after that, and naturally, we had fell deeply in love. After introducing each other to our families, fun adventures, and spending endless unforgettable moments together, I knew that Mehraneh would always be extremely special in my life and I could clearly picture her as my wife. As time went on, both of us deeply in love with one another, we unsurprisingly began to talk about a future together and getting married. I knew early in our relationship that she is my soulmate and always have considered myself the luckiest man in the world to have found her.

When the time came for Mehraneh to go back to Iran, it was the most heartbreaking experience in my life. However, even though we cannot hold each other in our arms every day, we bridge the distance by phone, video call, text, and email every single day. We have celebrated our birthdays and our anniversaries through video call and take photos with each other’s birthday cakes surrounded by photos of us together amd mementos of our love. This separation is extremely difficult for us emotionally but our love for one another and dreams of a happy family together in the future are what keep us going.

Mehraneh is currently in Iran and I am in the process of a K1 fiancé visa to bring her here to the US to get married and see our dreams of our own happy family come true. We have been planning our life together for years now with hopes of owning our own home, having kids and a puppy. The implementation of this presidential proclamation has caused so much emotional stress for us, and we fear that our dreams of being together here in the United States may not be able to come true. America is considered the land of the free, but I feel that my freedom is being robbed from me when I can not be with the woman I love. I am extremely lucky to have found my soulmate in life, I cannot lose her and my dreams to this discriminatory policy.