Us Immigration woes

Press release
Amsterdam, Monday, 29 January 2007

Dutch Gay Activists to Advise American Democrats
Love Exiles fighting for family rights in the US

A delegation of the Dutch Love Exiles Foundation will speak on 2 February 2007 at a meeting of the Democratic national committee in Washington DC. Love Exiles is a foundation that advocates for the right for US gays and lesbians with foreign partners to live in their home country. “Because we don’t have this one right, to live in our own country, we are excluded from all our other rights as US citizens,” love exile Robert Bragar told foreign gays and lesbians living with their European partners at an event to prepare for the Washington visit, yesterday evening.

While in the Netherlands and most European countries foreign partners of gays and lesbians have some immigration rights based on their relationship, the opposite is true in the USA. Americans with a relationship with a foreigner cannot sponsor their same-sex partner for immigration purposes. They have to choose between leaving their country or having a long distance relationship.

Martha McDevitt-Pugh and Robert Bragar, board members of the Love Exiles Foundation, will represent the group at the Democratic Party meeting. They will call on members of congress to support the ‘Uniting American Families Act’ when it is introduced in Congress. “Our goal is to get this issue on the Democratic agenda”, explains McDevitt-Pugh. She continues: “If this bill becomes law, we will be able to sponsor our foreign partners to live with us in the US, just as straight people can.”

McDevitt-Pugh, formerly a senior manager in Silicon Valley, is married to a Dutch woman. New York lawyer Robert Bragar is married to a Dutch man. Both live in Amsterdam and neither can live legally with their spouses in the US.

Community Event
The Love Exiles Foundation hosted a community event yesterday evening to collect stories of love exiles, in preparation of the visit to Washington. Love Exiles living in Spain, Belgium and Germany joined the group. “We are upset,” one guest who is living with her partner in Spain said. “My mother migrated to the US from Greece. She worked two and sometimes more jobs so that we could have food in our bellies. Now that she is old, I am forced to live outside the country and can’t support her. My brother recently met a Greek girl and was able to sponsor her to come to the States. I have been with my partner for 10 years and have no rights. We want the right to live at home.”

Note to the editor::
Martha McDevitt-Pugh and Robert Bragar are available for interviews before their trip to Washington on February 1st .
For more information:
exiles@xs4all.nl
www.loveexiles.org

After seven years of making it work with my boyfriend from Cyprus (whom I met while he was studying in my hometown of New York City), finally it seems that we have exhausted all of our possible options which have enabled us to stay together so far.
We have played by the rules for so long. Rules that tell us because we are a same-sex bi-national couple - we cannot support one another to stay legally in either’s country - like any heterosexual couple have the right to do. We have tried going back and forth from continent to continent, leaving every three months in order to satisfy the 90 day allowance we are permitted to stay on foreign soil. We have tried applying for all types of jobs in hope that we would gain work visas. We have taken loans to go to university in each other’s homeland.
If you name it, we have probably done it. It even crossed our minds to marry a lesbian or someone who could help us get dual citizenship. At last check, people who are caught marrying for this purpose, were fined up to $250,000, possible 5 years in prison and of course deportation.
A few months ago, I was on the verge of risking it, but then I read about a new law in Greece (where we have lived legally together for the last two years because he is Greek Cypriot, and I was on student visa), if a non-EU citizen marries a Greek, they must have a child together within the first three years of marriage, or else wait ten years before the foreigner could even apply for EU citizenship.
Unfair but true - heterosexuals have endless opportunities to marry and divorce like it’s a fad. Gays are denied this luxury because it’s not of “family values”.
In Vegas, I’m told straights can get married by an Elvis impersonator at a drive-thru window, and of course as soon as they wake up hungover the next day, they can get their precious vowels annulled immediately if they have any drunken regrets. Let us not mention countless celebs who have taken advantage of their right to union, but if we want to drop some names just for the sake of it, we’re probably aware of recent cases from the likes of J. Lo, Liza and of course Britney. Liz Taylor is notorious for all the X’s up on her mantle too, and let’s not forgot Prince Charles or Donald Trump who just tied the knot, again. The list is endless of straights who systematically abuse the system. Good for them that they take the sanctity of marriage so lightly, I wish I could even marry once - so that my partner of seven years and I can live easier, without the fear that every few months we will have to part, and scheme ways to reunite somehow. We don’t even have to “marry” in a church, or under some divine authority, but as human beings who have shared the sacred elements of love together for so long, we deserve the right to sponsor each other in the event we decide to live in either’s homeland.
So, after seven years, we will unwillingly have to say goodbye yet again; torn apart by hypocrisy, prejudice and ignorance.
This picture is of my Cypriot boyfriend (in the DC t-shirt) and I, taken the year 2000 in front of the White House.

~Vincent Di Santo
vidisdot@yahoo.com

Entry Denied

This is a link to the Documentary: http://www.entry-denied.com/

PHIL & HANS

Hans and Phil cling to one last ray of hope: a private member’s bill in Congress. To keep Hans in the country as a professional whose work has been deemed to be in the national interest, Rep. Barbara Lee has introduced such a bill, known as, H.R. 2501, in the House Judiciary Subcommittee of Immigration and Claims, to seek permanent residence for Hans. The Subcommittee is currently chaired by Rep. Lamar Smith. Status Report readers wishing to express support for this bill should contact the LGIRTF office to find out if their representative sits on the sub-committee.

This is a link to the Documentary: http://www.entry-denied.com/

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TYING THE KNOT

When a bank robber’s bullet ends the life of police officer Lois Marrero, her wife of thirteen years, Mickie, is honored as her surviving spouse but denied all pension benefits. When Sam, an Oklahoma rancher, loses his beloved husband of 22 years, long-estranged cousins of his late spouse try to lay claim to everything Sam has. As Mickie and Sam’s lives are put on trial, they are forced to confront the tragic reality that in the eyes of the law their marriages mean nothing. From an historical trip to the Middle Ages, to gay hippies storming the Manhattan marriage bureau in 1971, Tying the Knot digs deeply into the past and present to uncover the meaning of civil marriage in America today.

TYING THE KNOT began production in early 2001 with $10,000 grant from The Jerome Foundation. The project quickly operated without budget, sustained primarily by an incredible breadth of volunteers and donations from the project’s friends and families. TYING THE KNOT was shot over 3 turbulent years of marriage’s history in Florida, Massachusetts, Virginia, Washington DC, Oregon, New York, California, Connecticut, Holland and Canada. TYING THE KNOT had its world premiere in May 2004 at the Tribeca Film Festival. The final version, as seen in theaters, was completed in August 2004.

TYING THE KNOT

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