Push for equality in
gay immigration
House bill addresses
problems of same-sex,
bi-national couples
Carolyn Lochhead,
SFGate.com from the Web. June 22, 2005
Washington -- Olivier De Wulf
is from Belgium. Steve Boullianne is from Los Angeles. Thirteen
years ago they met, and now they live in San Francisco with their two adopted
boys, Laurent, 5, and Reece, 4.
If they were straight, they could marry, and De Wulf would be granted U.S.
citizenship. If they lived in Belgium, they could get married, and
Boullianne could become a Belgian citizen.
But their two boys could not stay with them for more than 90 days because of a
quirk in Belgian law designed to prevent mass immigration from the former colony
of the Congo. Even California's liberal domestic partnership law is of no
help when it comes to federal immigration law.
That leaves them with a dilemma. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., introduced
the latest version of a bill Tuesday to equalize immigration rights for gay and
lesbian couples, the Uniting American Families Act.
Nadler acknowledges that it has little chance of passage, but he hopes to build
support for the idea.
"A lot of people believe that because domestic partnership exists in California,
bi-national couples can stay in California, and it's simply not true," De Wulf
said Tuesday. "They think this is already solved, and it is not. "
De Wulf is on a temporary investor visa, a program that allows people who invest
$100,000 or more in the U.S. to gain temporary legal status. He owns his
own information technology firm called Ipsofacto. He has to renew the visa
every two years, based on his business meeting certain financial targets, or
leave the country.
People facing this problem are a "small fraction of a small fraction" of the
population, said Nadler, who has sponsored the bill for five years. He
introduced the latest version Tuesday and De Wulf was among those on Capitol
Hill urging its passage.
"When I first introduced this bill I thought it was just something to help a few
people," Nadler said. "I mean, what proportion of the population is gay,
what proportion of the gay population falls in love with somebody from another
country?" He said he's been surprised by the number of people affected.
A preliminary study of the 2000 census by demographer Gary Gates at the Williams
Project on gay studies at the UCLA, found that 6 percent of the 594,391 same-sex
unmarried partners that were counted included one citizen and one noncitizen.
That would indicate more than 35,000 same-sex bi-national couples living in the
United States at the time of the census.
Adam Francoeur, spokesman for Immigration Equality, a New York-based gay rights
group, said such couples probably underreported themselves because of fears
about their immigration status.
Nadler sees the small numbers of people affected as part of the answer, not part
of the problem, since fellow lawmakers should not oppose helping a small number
of people avoid what he called the wanton cruelty of forced separations.
The 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act bars same-sex couples from all federal
benefits conferred by marriage, including the right to sponsor an immigrant
spouse for permanent residence. That includes gay and lesbian couples
married in Massachusetts since that state's landmark court ruling last year made
it the first state to permit same-sex marriage.
The same prohibition applies to same-sex couples legally married in Belgium, the
Netherlands and Canada, the three countries that allow such marriages.
Sixteen nations, mostly in Europe, allow gay and lesbian couples to sponsor
same-sex partners for legal immigration.
Nadler said his legislation would not interfere with the Defense of Marriage Act
because it does not confer marriage on a couple. It also would not allow
unmarried heterosexual couples to gain immigration rights.
Some same-sex bi-national couples try to evade the law by finding an
opposite-sex gay or lesbian couple to marry so that both immigrant partners can
get citizenship. This illegal and often desperate move carries the threat
of deportation and the potential legal complications of marrying the proxy
partners, with further complications if children are involved.
Immigration agents tightly monitor potential marriage fraud among heterosexual
couples, requiring interviews and documentation of a marriage after four years,
as well as affidavits of support from the citizen partner, enforceable by civil
suit.
Victoria Neilson, legal director of Immigration Equality, said foreign gays and
lesbians applying for temporary U.S. visas, such as tourist or student visas,
can also be affected if they mention they have a U.S. partner.
Obtaining such visas requires proof that the applicant has no intention to stay
permanently. "That's the No. 1 reason visa applications are denied,"
Neilson said. "If an applicant reveals that they have a partner in the
U.S., immigration officials often take that as an incentive to remain
permanently."
Nadler said he hoped to exceed the 129 cosponsors who backed the bill in the
last Congress.
"The idea now is to build up more and more pressure, get more and more co-
sponsors, until one of two things happens," he said. "The pressure becomes
unbearable and Republicans finally change or we get a Democratic Congress,
whichever comes first."
E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at
clochhead@sfchronicle.com.
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