Obama administration denies immigration benefit for married gay couple

[Bluebear]

Citing the Defense of Marriage Act, the Obama administration denied immigration benefits to a married gay couple from San Francisco and ordered the expulsion of a man who is the primary caregiver to his AIDS-afflicted spouse. Bradford Wells, a U.S. citizen, and Anthony John Makk, a citizen of Australia, were married seven years ago in Massachusetts. They have lived together 19 years, mostly in an apartment in the Castro district. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied Makk's application to be considered for permanent residency as a spouse of an American citizen, citing the 1996 law that denies all federal benefits to same-sex couples.

The decision was issued July 26. Immigration Equality, a gay-rights group that is working with the couple, received the notice Friday and made it public Monday. Makk was ordered to depart the United States by Aug. 25. Makk is the sole caregiver for Wells, who has severe health problems.

"I'm married just like any other married person in this country," Wells said. "At this point, the government can come in and take my husband and deport him. It's infuriating. It's upsetting. I have no power, no right to keep my husband in this country. I love this country, I live here, I pay taxes and I have no right to share my home with the person I married."...

"We are appealing to the Obama administration to begin to put into action what they've said repeatedly they can do," said Immigration Equality spokesman Steve Ralls. "The Department of Homeland Security and ICE have said again and again that they can exercise discretion in individual cases, but they have not done so for a single gay or lesbian couple yet."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/08/BAO71KKPEC.DTL#ixzz1UXoiCxUw

[meegbear]

1. Well, color me rainbow

[Bluebear]

2. Chill the fuck out, he's got this.

[meegbear]

3. LOL!!

[MuseRider]

7. !

:evilgrin:

[Safetykitten]

33. I smell a commission! The Board of Gay Standards Review. Six R's, six D's and a Martian.

[Bluebear]

34. Don't forget the clergy! why do you hate God?

"and a Martian" u crack me up :)

[Demit]

4. At least somebody in the Compassion President's party is exhibiting some compassion:

'Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said Pelosi has contacted immigration officials on behalf of the couple and "will be working to exhaust all appropriate immigration remedies that are open to pursue." '

[Bluebear]

5. Indeed. Thank you Rep Pelosi!!!

[Bluebear]

25. .

[MuseRider]

6. "but they have not done so for a single gay or lesbian couple yet."

Now that is some fierce advocacy right there!

[QC]

8. Those people just need to wait for him to finish evolving. n/t

[Sapphocrat]

36. Evolving?! EVOLUTION?!?!?!?!!!

Dark-sided! Dark-siiiiided!!!

[Bluebear]

37. XOxoxo

[Solly Mack]

9. K&R

[muffin1]

10. He's not a KING!!1!

[Bluebear]

12. It's just a pet issue for these two gays.

[QC]

13. They think he has a magic wand!

:cry:

[muffin1]

29. I love you...

:yourock:

[Bluebear]

30. Me too!

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[alp227]

14. REPEAL DOMA - and call Sec. Napolitano and demand a reversal

comment line: 202-282-8495

http://www.dhs.gov/xutil/contactus.shtm

[FLAprogressive]

15. I bet they'd rather have PRESIDENT BACHMANN!11!11!!!1one

:sarcasm:

[muffin1]

16. Kick because it's important...

:kick:

[Luminous Animal]

17. This is very sad and frustrating. Let's hope that Pelosi's efforts will have a positive outcome.

Pelosi's contact info (please be nice and succinct.)

You can email her but you'd have to lie about your location:
https://pelosi.house.gov/contact/email-me.shtml

Or phone or write.

Washington, DC Office
Representative Nancy Pelosi
235 Cannon HOB
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: [phone]


San Francisco Office
Representative Nancy Pelosi
90 7th Street, Suite 2-800
San Francisco, CA 94103
Phone: [phone]


Also, a link to Immigration Equality
http://www.immigrationequality.org/

[alp227]

31. since she's in House leadership she has a national contact form

http://www.democraticleader.gov/contact

[Luminous Animal]

32. Thank you! When I clicked on that link at work, it took me to an error page but it works now!

[Ninjaneer]

18. K&R n/t

[EFerrari]

19. I thought the administration had ditched DOMA.

Well, I'm an idiot.

I hope this means Nancy has this one.

[Unvanguard]

28. The Administration ditched defending DOMA. It hasn't ditched enforcing DOMA.

It says that it will enforce DOMA until it is repealed or struck down by the Supreme Court, but in the mean time it will refuse to defend its constitutionality in court. (It has actually gone even further in some cases, and actively argued against its constitutionality.)

I understand their reasons for this policy when it comes to most of DOMA's applications. It makes some sense to say that the executive branch's determination that a law is unconstitutional should not enable the executive branch to unilaterally ignore the law. But it is not a reasonable policy when it comes to binational couples, who should at least get a moratorium on deportations to prevent them from being forcibly separated by a law that the Administration admits is unconstitutional.

[Name removed]

20. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Behind the Aegis]

21. The more you know...cause knowledge is power!

[WildEyedLiberal]

23. Everyone who can - especially advocacy orgs - should find the CIS office who handled the claim

Send letters of support. It may not do much, but if the case garners lots of mail/negative attention, it may be an incentive to exercise discretion (which, indeed, they are entitled to do).

[Bluebear]

24. Excellent advice WEL, thank you!

[WildEyedLiberal]

45. I have a wee bit of familiarity with the immigration system, and letters of support can

get entered into the record (at least where I've seen, although I have not worked with CIS). At the very least, it'll let the people handling this case - who can argue for the government's discretion - know that this family has a lot of people in their corner and a lot of people who are paying attention.

[Unvanguard]

26. I don't know very much about immigration law, but I wonder about that analysis of discretion.

As I understand it--and, again, I could very well be wrong--what ICE has said is that it can exercise discretion in its allocation of resources with respect to deportation/enforcement, i.e. it won't focus on deporting non-criminals, and will especially not focus on deporting non-criminals with family relationships with US citizens, including same-sex spouses.

But the couple in this case was not, as far as I can tell, immediately threatened with deportation, like most of the other binational same-sex couples whose stories make news. Rather, the non-citizen spouse applied for legal residency on the basis of his marriage. And that's not a matter of enforcement discretion: that's a certain legal benefit whose allocation is governed by statute, and the meaning of "spouse" within the statute is controlled by DOMA.

That doesn't excuse the policy, obviously, which is evil and gratuitously cruel, and plainly motivated by nothing more than bigotry. It doesn't even really excuse the Obama Administration, which could have and should have developed a more formal and reliable manner of protecting spouses in binational same-sex marriages than vague enforcement guidelines that may or may not apply to any particular case. (The same thing could be said more broadly about the Obama Administration's weakness of will when it comes to using executive power to protect immigrants and immigrant families, though it is especially egregious here because the policy in question is grounded in a statute that the Administration has rightly concluded is unconstitutional.) But, if I'm right, it goes some way toward understanding the balancing act the Obama Administration is engaged in here.

[Starry Messenger]

27. recommend.

[Sapphocrat]

35. But Obama directed the DOJ to stop defending DOMA!!111!11!!!

This I know, because TEH LIST tells me so!!!11!

Why do you hate America?!?!?!?1/1/111111!!!!1

[polmaven]

38. Not defending the constitutionality

of a law in court, and not enforcing a law which is currently still in place are two very, very different things. Even the president is not free to simply break current law because he diagrees with it. He is not above the law.

[Bluebear]

39. Except that little detail that he can exercise discretion in individual cases

Did you read that?

[Bluebear]

40. Guess not

[muffin1]

41. Guess he's not allowed to speak, either.

[scheming daemons]

43. Yes... because the President reviews each of the individual cases

Thousands of them... he does it in his spare time.


:eyes:


This kind of thing is done by low level staffers of various departments.

[scheming daemons]

42. It is amazing that some of you think that Obama PERSONALLY reviews these cases

The executive branch of the federal government is *HUGE*.


Yes... he sits at the top of it... but it is not like he micromanages every single department.


Doubtful that he even knows about this case yet.

[TriMera]

44. Evolution. It's such a slow process. n/t