Binational couples face difficulty in nightmarish proportions
Delays, bureaucracy, inconsistency, and injustice make the U.S. immigration system a nightmare for millions. Debate over the system is intensifying.
Immigration Equality collaborated with Human Rights Watch to research, write, and publish a study about the fate of binational same-sex couples under U.S. law.
The report, called Family, Unvalued, shows how U.S. law fails to protect and serve binational couples. The poorly run system can affect, and sometimes destroy, families without any legal protection. This report reveals how discrimination has grown from a long history of anti-immigrant campaigns. Most of all, Family, Unvalued lets the reader empathize with the sometimes horrifying, always enlightening testimony of lesbian and gay families.
In his The Atlantic Online blog, Andrew Sullivan offers his take on FOX News’ argument for discrimination in the immigration process.
Sullivan says Bill O’Reilly “simply asserts that gay binational couples are more likely to be fraudulent than straight couples. What evidence does he have for this? None. Gay immigration advocates back exactly the same standards of proof and evidence of serious relationships for gay couples as straight ones. And most fraudulent would-be immigrants are far more reluctant to self-identify as gay than as straight. For good measure, some binational gay couples are also legally married in America, in Massachusetts. But their/my marriage license is regarded as toilet paper by the federal government. You can see the brick wall that Rachel Tiven’s arguments receive from O’Reilly. That brick wall is called homophobia, an assumption that gay relationships are worth less and mean less than straight ones. It’s so deep I doubt O’Reilly is even aware of it.”
I adopted our first daughter from an orphanage in Vietnam when she was a baby. I share custody with my ex – we have a great co-parenting arrangement and live mere blocks from each other. This daughter is now 11 and has known my current partner since she was four years of age. My current partner and I are CA domestic partners and we inseminated and had our baby girl. California law gave me, the non-bio mom a right to be on the birth certificate, recognized automatically as a legal parent, by virtue of our DP status. So now we have our family – of four; two moms and two daughters and are plagued by the anomaly of State legal recognition and federal invalidation.
My DP is from abroad and her working visa will soon expire. How dare O’Reilly place me and my babies at a disadvantage for those few that will abuse the system; and it will be no different to the few heterosexuals that have abused the system for years.
My family will be torn apart- because I cannot petition for my partner. I will be faced with my sophie’s choice. First daughter cannot leave the State and my second daughter will have to leave with my partner, because she is the bio mom and I would never separate them. Imagine my kids and I are American citizens and we have no rights to stay as a unit and keep together in our own country- the great America – so concerned about human rights in the rest of the world?
It will be like a death for us. the sisters adore each other- if you are a parent and you have a family, close your eyes and imagine that this is you- because we are the same as you; four people who love and depend on each other.
So to O’Reilly et al, I guess it is okay for those privileged enough to have marriage and the rights that go with it, to go to the alter and endure a three day marriage or a two year marriage or whatever, but my family must be torn apart with no rights because you ‘Mr. O ‘ fear that people may abuse the system. I challenge you to have real families such as mine on your show and to repeat what you “OPINE” to my face.