The Couple App is Helping to Keep Multi-national Couples United in the States
The digital age has brought on a number of things: the ability to converse globally with a few clicks and strokes, to direct technology with our voices, to navigate cars that can self-correct, and to utilize phone applications that can do just about anything -including helping couples secure green cards? Multi-national couples, consisting of one citizen/permanent resident and one non-legal immigrant, have turned to the Couple app to act as secondary evidence in order to prove the legitimacy of their relationships.
"Couple" is a mobile app that creates a digital timeline of a couple's relationship, providing a network between the pair, logging the exchange of text messages, notes, videos, photos, to-do lists, sketches, dates, and important dates, such as anniversaries and birthdays. There's also the "thumb kiss;" when both partners happen to press their thumbs to their screens at the same time, this feature causes a vibration.
The app is able to log and catalog the complete lifespan of a couple, which makes for inarguable proof of valid relationship history. Within the last few months, dozens of couples have reached out to the Couple app and the app's co-founder, Oleg Kostour, asking for the data file for their timeline, so that it can be included with their green card petitions.
The app was founded last year by Kostour and four former classmates from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, when they spent months at an incubator hosted by Y Combinator in California. The 20-somethings never imagined that their app would help to keep couples united in the States.
"It was a surprise," said 25-year-old Koustour, referring to the unintentional use of the app by couples petitioning for green cards. "We weren't thinking about that when we came up with the app."
Because the young founders were away from their significant others, who were still in Canada, they often visited various media outlets, like Facebook, Skype and Twitter to communicate. They understood the value of the mobile app, which they'd manifested, and now they recognize that the Couple app will act as a true asset for those petitioning to keep their fiancés/spouses in the states.