Binational Same Sex Couples: The Minority of a Minority

Why Passing the Uniting American Families Act

and Repealing DOMA is Urgent

 

The Census in the year 2000 said that binational same sex couples numbered approximately 36,000.  In the 2010 Census, we have yet to receive a number, however rumor has it that it was not counted or divided to give an accurate number.  With the onset of online dating, Skype, chat rooms, and other various ways our lives our touched by technology, I believe that number to be at least tripled.  However, all in all, we are a small group of gays and lesbians who have fallen in love with someone who is not an American Citizen.  If we were heterosexual, we could apply for a green card for our spouses and it would be immediately granted with little fanfare.  Because the people with whom we have fallen in love are of the same sex, there is little to no options for our spouses to immigrate.  Our options include the following:

1.  Our foreign born spouse can get a job here in the United States.  Unfortunately, it has to be a specialized job that no American citizen is able to do or wants to do.

2.  College.  Paying out of state fees.  However, one can only afford that for so long and there are only so many degrees that a person can earn.

3.  Be unusually talented.  By that I mean a Celine Dion or a Sammy Sosa type talent. 

Those are the legal options we have for immigration.  If our spouses do not or cannot fall into any of these categories, our options are really limited:

1.  Move to the spouses country if they are gay friendly.

2.  Move to a third country if able

3.  Live apart and on visits from time to time

4.  Live in the United States as a non-person "under the wire"

While Marriage Equality is so very important and absolutely needs to get done, those who live with their partners can go home at night and be held by their spouse/partner.  Bi-national same sex couples live visit to visit...often going a year or so before being able to hold their loved one.  I am asking everyone to please take action to get the Uniting American Families Act brought up for some sort of vote.  Right now, Lamar Smith, chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the House, has no intentions of bringing anything like it up for a vote.  He needs to be contacted daily.  We need to make the Uniting American Families Act something that Congress hears each and every day.

Tonight when you go to bed and you reach out and touch your loved one, know that thousands of bi-national gay and lesbian people are alone and not able to hold their loved one.  We just want a chance to live our lives with the person with whom we love, to live and love and just be and be legal.   Know that we are a small group, but we are part of a larger group and we are Americans asking for our right to live with our love. We ask for your help in getting the necessary legislation brought forward. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Judiciary Committee: Where My Family's Rights go to Die

The Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA)...you know the one. It would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)....you know the one that says Marriage is between one Man and one Woman. It has gone the way of all bills regarding the rights of this US citizen to marry the love of my life. It has gone the way of all bills regarding the Immigration Rights of same sex bi-national couples. It has gone to the Judiciary Committee in both the House and the Senate. I can almost quote http://www.thomas.gov/ as I have seen bills like this one go down to the Judiciary for about 10 years now: "Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary".

I now hear rumors that the Uniting American Families Act will be introduced into Congress probably on Thursday. I wish this could make me excited, I wish this could make me happy and hopeful. Unfortunately, all it does is make me sad and wistful. I hope to the Almighty that someone will say, "Wait, stop this bill should not be sent to committee...this bill should be voted on and passed TODAY." That would give me hope, that would be cause for excitement.

Why Congress thinks very little of United States Citizens, I have no idea. We are just asking to be allowed to live in our country with the person that with whom we have fallen in love. It is not evil, it is not a conspiracy, it is not even equal marriage rights. All we, as same sex bi-national couples want, is to be free to live with our spouses without fear of deportation.

I am willing to talk, to debate, or whatever to anyone who has questions, comments and can be helpful in getting this bill passed.

DO NOT LET IT DIE in Judiciary Committee as it has for the last 10 years. Please, our families depend on it to be able to be together, live in peace and be free.

Treating the Symptoms Instead of Finding the Cause

Treating the Symptoms Instead of Finding the Cause

In working in the world of health care, we have a saying, “People don’t usually die from cancer, they die from the complications of cancer.” People’s immune systems are so depleted from cancer and the treatments of cancer, which they are unable to fight off any sort of illness that comes along like pneumonia.

The United States of America has a huge cancer. It is our immigration laws. Here are a few of the symptoms that we are attempting to “treat” instead of changing the Immigration System that we currently have:

1. Undocumented immigrants coming over from Mexico looking for our American Jobs.

2. Racial profiling in States passing the Arizona like law

3. Drugs/Gangs out of control on the Mexican American Border

4. Immigration Fraud

5. Business hiring Undocumented Workers

6. People leaving the United States to live in exile with their loved one

7. People living in the United States illegally because they are unable to find an “in” with our immigration laws

8. Families being forced to live apart because of immigration laws

9. People who have lived in the United States for most of their lives being forced to leave the only country they remember to go to a country they do not know.

10. New states laws that are moving toward “no one being able to buy or sell without the mark in their hand or forehead”.

What is the United States doing to change all of these problems? The States being fed up with the Federal Governments inaction are beginning to try and treat these symptoms. Unfortunately, without the Federal Government intervention of changing our immigration system and laws, we are only trying put a small bandage on a gaping wound. We have to change the Federal Immigration Laws in order to treat the cause. Ninety-six percent of Americans do not know is what it takes to immigrate to our great Land. Therein lays the problem. Right now we are in a firestorm of new state laws aimed at getting rid of the undocumented by ways that are cruel, unjust and quite frankly scary.

Solutions to the above symptoms:

1. Develop a guest worker program that does not cost the worker any money. How in the world are the people struggling to come over to the United States for jobs able to pay the huge fees of the Immigration system? They cannot, therefore they must come in without going through the proper channels. It is a matter of life and death for them and their families.

2. Do not penalize business owners who need to hire these guest workers by fees or extra taxes.

3. Do something at the Mexican-American Border to control drug trafficking. It is believed by many that because of all the money it brings into the American economy, that the federal government is not doing a whole lot to try and stave the influx of drugs at the border. At the well known crossing sights, or the desolate areas where people are crossing over (drugs, human trafficking) let’s put up some sort of barrier.

4. Pass Federal law that will allow homosexual United States Citizens to sponsor their partner to get a green card the same as heterosexual couples.

5. Pass a Federal law legalizing same sex marriages.

6. Pass the Dream Act.

7. Send the Immigration folks through a training course of dealing with people who are not American citizens. I have seen the horrendous treatment that non Americans can go though at foreign embassies. I have seen the rudeness of those who work at airports herding the non-English speaking visitors like cattle. I was embarrassed for the country that I love by these ICE workers.


Let’s figure out a way to treat the Cancer that is the Immigration System in the United States instead of over reacting and trying to treat the symptoms that have developed. The Federal Immigration Laws are the Cancer; they are the cause of all of symptoms. Let’s fix this at the top level, and then work on the rest of the symptoms.