Andrew Harmon, the Advocate's new DC reporter, has the news of Immigration Equality's request that the Obama administration stop the deportations of binational, same-sex couples until DOMA is resolved. Seems like a very reasonable request:
An LGBT immigration rights group is calling on the Obama administration to use restraint in deportation proceedings involving married, binational gay couples pending ultimate resolution of the current legal challenges to section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act.This is a big issue for binational, same-sex couples. It's solvable, if the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, wants it to be.
In written requests delivered Thursday to Atty. Gen. Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, the group, Immigration Equality, also called upon immigration officials to hold green card applications submitted on behalf of spouses of LGBT American citizens or legal residents until DOMA’s constitutionality is settled by the courts. Such a move, if enacted, could allow a noncitizen spouse to remain in the country pending such legal resolution.
"Of the many rights that flow from marriage, none is more immediate than the right to petition for lawful permanent residence for a foreign-born husband or wife,” Immigration Equality executive director Rachel B. Tiven and legal director Victoria Neilson wrote in the letter to Attorney General Holder. "Every day American families are torn apart because Section 3 of DOMA prevents a foreign spouse from obtaining lawful permanent residence."
(I meant to post this on Friday, but then got waylaid by the breaking news about the trial of the 13 GetEQUAL protesters.)
