Love Equals… Paperwork?

30 October 2026

From the moment Swiss Husband (then Swiss Boyfriend) and I started talking about our future together, I thought of paperwork. Anyone who has moved from one place to another knows what I mean. Change of address forms, getting licenses reissued, insurance forms. And in our case, visa forms. Having moved around often as a child (I had my first passport at 6 months old) and as immigrant to the United States from Zimbabwe who lived in a community of immigrants from Jamaica, the Philippines, Russia and everywhere in between, I knew the importance of paperwork. I understood that paperwork allowed various family members to visit, and that the lack of paperwork kept friends and neighbors from going home for a loved one's funeral. Paperwork. So even as our decision to spend our lives together catapulted me onto Cloud 9, paperwork felt like a chain keeping me from getting up too high. Image Courtesy of the U.S. State Department In an ideal world, paperwork would simply allow us to travel back and forth to see each other, and eventually live in the same place. Paperwork would mean legal protections and acknowledgement by one another’s governments. But the question of how to get that paperwork started kept me up at night. Did we need to hire lawyers? How much would it cost? How long would it take? Would I be more likely to receive a visa as a fiancée or as a wife? What if I was denied a visa? As I thought about I figured paperwork couldn’t be that hard for an American moving to Switzerland, right? Oh, how wrong I was. Because to the Swiss government, Sure, I held a shiny, powerful blue passport and called myself an “American,” but what mattered to them where I was born — in Zimbabwe. Let me rewind a bit. After we had our civil ceremony, Swiss Husband (yay!) and I started the process of my Swiss visa. But before I could apply for a visa, we needed to provide proof of marriage. Paperwork. Husband tells a funny story of being thoroughly instructed by colleagues at work about how difficult the process would be. “Sit down, get a notebook, you’ll need these notes.” As Husband tells it, “In America it’s so easy! The state says, ‘you love each other? Yay! Here’s your certificate! Have a good life. Neeext!’ But in Switzerland, not so much.” Apparently the first step of the visa process would be getting the Swiss government to recognize our marriage. Easy enough, we would just send a copy of our marriage certificate, right? No. Swiss marriage recognition required a few things on my end: a birth certificate from the Zimbabwean government issued within 6 months of the marriage, and proof that I had never been married. All stamped by the Zimbabwean Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be sent to Pretoria, South Africa (because obviously there was no Swiss Consulate in Zimbabwe), and then sent to Switzerland. Paperwork. Getting my birth certificate was easy enough (kinda), but proof that I had never been married proved difficult. To certify that I had not been married before, the Zimbabwean government required my national I.D. number. The same national I.D. number issued at 18 years of age. However, because I left Zimbabwe as a child, I didn’t have a national I.D. number. Well, the argument went, without a national I.D. number, how could the government know I’d never been married? Well, one would hope that the fact I left as a child would negate the possibility of marriage, but apparently not. At one point, a few people suggested it would just be easier for me to travel to Zimbabwe and get my I.D. number so I could complete my paperwork. At another point, I thought, maybe we could just find Husband a job in the U.S. and have him move instead. It’s got to be easier and less gut wrenching than this. I cannot explain to you the feeling of sitting scrunched between two government bureaucracies for the hope of living with the person I love. I felt disoriented and confused by the Swiss government’s decision that what mattered was where I was born, not where I was a citizen, where I had spent the majority of my life, or really how I identified. They would decide where to put the emphasis of my identity. But it taught me a lot about my future home, about its values and its views on people looking to build a new life within their borders. Eventually, with only the birth certificate, we submitted the visa application explaining that I had never been married, but had difficulty (because of Switzerland own inane requirements) proving it. Husband and I decided to take a risk and if the government rejected the application, I’d travel to Zimbabwe to get the I.D. In November, after my two weeks getting to preview life in Switzerland, we learned that our marriage had been officially recognized. In October. All that work (and anxiety and fear) and no notification at all. But that didn’t matter. At last, the path the to the visa application was clear. We submitted the seemingly easier visa paperwork in March, and by the end of April, I received my visa. I could move to Switzerland. All it took, was some paperwork. Have you moved to another country? What was your experience like? Please leave me a comment and share your story! Originally published on Substack on Jul 28, 2025.