>Kind of like this story from your own state:
>
>http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/nation_world/11837102.html
>
>Quite a story...let's home they win and can stay here.....

But look at the speed of the bureaucracy - it took them, what, 17 years to reach a decision in the process. I can imagine it wasn't any faster in the late seventies - can only imagine it was on punched cards then - so the process of getting a visa could have been derailed or delayed for a few years more by change of status. Nobody in their right mind would say "ok, let's tell INS we're married now" because they could only expect few more years of delays, paying at least some fees again, and actually increasing their chances of forfeiting whatever progress either have made in the process.

OTOH, what does it matter that they got married meanwhile? Were they supposed to spend the months (or years), while the visa process is taking it course, in suspended animation? And now thirty years later they're just supposed to plug back in into their old place, where their beds there are still warm, right? Because they were plotting to disrupt the constitutional arrangement of the US of A by not telling anyone they married meanwhile.

I often come to conclusion that in some ways dogs have more rights here than some people do.