I appreciate the post, can see your point. I would ask you, though, that while yes indeedy, bureaucratic red-tape, the INS is a nightmare today, was it such back in 1961, more importantly, would she really have been thinking that at her age??
Whether or not she would have thought of it I don’t know, but her mom probably would, and so would people like “Frank”.
As to the INS being a headache, my parents had to use a lawyer to bring in 3 kids adopted from australia while my dad was in the U.S. Navy. It was definitely a headache then as well (they used to do their job)