Yesterday's announcement that the Obama Administration will no longer continue to defend DOMA offers a (little) ray of hope for bi-national couples who wish to live together in the United States.
A round up of some of the information that is flying around out there:
http://out4immigration.blogspot.com/...ding-doma.html
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DOMA has stood in the way of immigration reform for LGBT families. DOMA has meant that each state in the nation chooses whether the institution of marriage can be opened to LGBT couples – and whether that state recognizes the legal union formed between two people of the same sex in other states or abroad. Getting rid of DOMA will open the way for US immigration law to acknowledge marriages between binational same-sex couples.
The "tipping point" in the demise of DOMA seems to be Edith Winsor’s lawsuit. When her Dutch-born wife Thea Spyer died, after a partnership spanning 44 years, the government sent Edith a large tax bill for Thea’s part of their shared property. Edith went to court demanding their relationship be recognized as family, in which case the state would not tax her. On reviewing the case, Obama recognized blatant anti-gay discrimination and announced he was not willing to defend DOMA.
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http://prernalal.com/2011/02/what-sh...efending-doma/
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Immigration Equality has forever opposed the idea of same-sex couples filing I-130 claims and adjudicating their cases in court. They have good reason to believe that federal judges will defer to DHS. For the most part, they are right since you are unlikely to win your claim and your partner may end up in removal proceedings.
But there is a better way to deal with this. Forget listening to advocacy organizations and lawyers. Stop sitting on your laurels. Ideally, I would like to see some 36,000 couples filing I-130 “Petition for Alien Relative” petitions with USCIS. Just imagine the mayhem that would cause. USCIS has to go through each claim. It will take them eons to reject them. You can file appeal upon appeal and backlog them further. You probably don’t even need to take to the streets or the courts. Start talking to the media about how President Obama is keeping you apart from your partner. Under immense pressure, Congressional leaders will have to start holding hearings. Sooner or later, DOMA will be repealed in the courts or by Congress. Even without that, DHS has to issue a memo allowing your partner to live and work legally in the country (deferred action) and Congress has to take action and pass the Uniting American Families Act.
The system is denying you equal rights so screw with it. Give them hell. Shut them down. Go all out for reverse attrition through enforcement. It’s a whole lot more fun than sitting around doing nothing.
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I think this is a strategy that is well worth pursuing, particularly for undocumented immigrants who have overstayed their original visa (ie. those with the least to lose and the most to gain).
This is very similar to what happened in the UK pre-1997 (when the Blair government created an "exception to the rules" that allowed unmarried foreign partners to apply if they met certain criteria, the precursor to the immigration parity options they offer now). Prior to the Labor government coming to power bi-national couples flooded the immigration service/system with applications that remained in litigation for years until there was a legally viable process. It was a long and painful process, but worth it in the end.
With the DOMA on its way out, we should hope to be able to chip away at the iceberg of legal inequities bit by bit. Immigration may be towards the top of that list.
http://out4immigration.blogspot.com/...amas-doma.html
"there's still more work to do"
"Same-sex couples are still treated unequally under federal immigration law."
Prof. Tobias Wolff