Giving Compass' Take:

• Andrea, chapter leader and member of Resource Generation, expresses her passion for social justice and discusses her journey to funding immigration justice when coming from a family of wealthy immigrants.

• In what ways can donors make an impact on immigration rights, especially those who didn't have the advantages that Andrea's family did?

• Read more about immigration and social justice in the U.S.

At my second wedding ceremony, the octogenarian vicar said to the guests, “Let’s be honest, this couple’s initial wedding was quite lacking.”

Pretty bold, right? But he was right. My first wedding was for legal purposes only — my spouse is a citizen of the United Kingdom and I am a U.S. citizen. I knew I was going to marry him eventually, but we married sooner than we expected so that he could get a green card and live and work in the United States legally, and live without any significant fear of deportation.

The two of us lived overseas while we were dating, and we met many international couples — most of whom were resigned to the fact that they would have to be separated for about a year to fill out paperwork and navigate the U.S. immigration bureaucracy before they could legally be reunited in the United States.

I couldn’t bear the thought of being separate from my now-spouse for a year. We found some fancy immigration lawyers, paid them thousands of dollars and were legally married in the U.S. in about a month.

This smacks of privilege — as a young person with wealth, I had both the networks to find a good lawyer and the money to pay for one. As a cisgender heterosexual and English-speaking couple, we were pretty palatable as a couple to the Department of Homeland Security.

And yet, navigating the immigration bureaucracy was stressful, even for me. As a daughter of Chinese immigrants, hearing about family separation of migrants formed knots in my stomach.

Read the full article about funding immigration justice at Resource Generation.