Love Across Borders: Passports, Papers, and Romance in a Divided World

With deep empathy, rigorous reporting, and the irresistible perspective of a true romantic, journalist Anna Lekas Miller spotlights couples around the world who confront frustrating immigration systems to be together—as she did to be with her husband. ​

We are told that love conquers all, but what happens when you don’t have the right passport?

Love  Across  Borders  takes  readers  through  contentious  frontiers  around  the  world,  from Turkey to Iraq, Syria to Greece, Mexico to the United States, to reveal the wide-spread  prejudicial  laws  intent  on  dividing  us.  Lekas  Miller  tells  her  own  gripping  story  of  meeting  Salem  Rizk,  in  Istanbul,  where  they were  both  reporting  on  the  Syrian  civil war. But when Turkey started cracking down on refugees, Salem, who is Syrian, wasn’t allowed to stay there, nor could he safely return to Syria. He was a man without a country. So Lekas Miller had to decide her next move: she had an American passport but deep personal ties to the Middle East, and she knew it was unfair that Salem couldn’t travel freely the way she could.

More important, she loved him.  Over  the  next  few  years,  as  they  navigated  Salem’s  asylum  claims,  the  United  States’  Muslim  ban,  and  labyrinthine  regulations  in  several  different countries,  Lekas  Miller learned about—and naturally bonded with—other people whose spouses had been deported,  who  found  love  in  refugee  camps, whose  differing  immigration  statuses  caused  complicated  power  dynamics  and  financial  hardship  in  their  relationships  or  threatened  the  wellbeing  of their  children.  Here,  offering  a  uniquely  diverse,  international, and intimate look at the global immigration crisis, she collects and interweaves these  rich  love stories  with  a  fascinating  look  at  the  history  of  passports  (a  shockingly  recent institution), the legacy of colonialism, and the discriminatory laws shaping how people move through the world every day.  

Ultimately, she builds a powerful, moving case for a borderless society—one where she and Salem could move freely to be near family or back to the city that first let them fall in love, and where a border patrol agent can’t keep anyone’s love story from its happy ending. 

“A book designed to change minds and hearts. What are we fighting for, after all, if not a world where love can be truly free?” —Sarah Jaffe, author of Work Won't Love You Back and Necessary Trouble