By Adrian Florido, Fronteras
SAN DIEGO – Marrying a U.S. citizen has long been the surest way for an immigrant to gain permanent residency in the U.S. But under current immigration law, this doesn’t apply to all couples. UCLA researchers estimate some 40,000 couples risk being separated because that benefit doesn’t extend to same-sex partners, and gay and lesbian activists are fighting to be included as immigration reform takes shape.
Jesus Rodriguez and William Wood’s romance started in 2009, when they met in Atlanta. Last year, William got into a master’s program at UC San Diego.
Jesus moved out first to get a head start settling in. But on Labor Day weekend, he drove into a traffic checkpoint. He didn’t have a license. He was arrested. He called William from the San Diego police detention center.
JESUS RODRIGUEZ: “Yeah and I had to explain to him, I said, this is what happened. I said ‘Oh my God, I’m not going to get to see you ever again.’ And he said why? I said they’re going to deport me. He said why? I said because of this.”
Jesus is undocumented. He overstayed a tourist visa in 1995 when he was visiting from Mexico. But he’d never told William, a U.S. citizen.
WILLIAM WOOD: “It was a little surprising.”
RODRIGUEZ: “And obviously he couldn’t believe what I was saying. He said but why didn’t you tell me? I said well, I was hoping this would be solved with some sort of immigration reform that was going to take place.”
He hoped that eventually, an immigration reform package like the one now being discussed in Congress would be approved, and he’d be allowed to stay. But now he’d been caught. With a lawyer’s help, he applied for a stay of deportation. He has a court hearing next month. But in the meantime, Jesus and William flew to Washington, D.C., to get married.
But this wouldn’t help Jesus, because the federal law that makes it easy for the spouse of a U.S. citizen to get a green card doesn’t apply to same-sex spouses. That’s forced many binational gay couples to split up. Jose and William knew this, but decided to get married anyway.
RODRIGUEZ: “We wanted to be prepared just in case.”
Just in case President Obama’s immigration reform agenda, which he unveiled in January and which includes a benefit for same-sex partners, prevails.
RODRIGUEZ: “That was one of the main reasons, because we knew that things are changing so we hope that that will also count towards that.”
Jesus hopes that before he’s forced out of the country, at least one of three things will happen.
If a reform package includes a path to citizenship for the 11 million people in the country illegally, Jesus could stay that way.
But he knew that would be a huge sticking point on Capitol Hill. So he figured that If a reform bill at least gave same-sex spouses immigration rights like the president wants, William could petition for him to stay that way. That’s why they rushed to get married.
RODRIGUEZ: “So I’m hoping that either that way or just the immigration reform as a whole will have an opportunity for me.”
There’s a third possibility. The reason same-sex partners don’t qualify for immigration and more than 1,000 other federal benefits is because of the Defense of Marriage Act, which on a federal level defines marriage as between a man and woman.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on DOMA’s constitutionality this summer. If it’s overturned, William could possibly sponsor Jesus even absent an immigration reform bill.
AMOS LIM: “That’s why it’s very important for either DOMA to be repealed or, in comprehensive immigration reform, every time the word spouse is mentioned, three more words are added: ‘or permanent partners.'”
Amos Lim is part of a San Francisco-based coalition called Out For Immigration. He and other LGBT activists fear a benefit for permanent homosexual partners may be an early casualty in the debate over what immigration reform will look like.
Unlike the President’s proposal, the one unveiled by a bi-partisan team of senators did not mention immigration benefits for gay couples. Here’s what Senator John McCain said about his immigration priorities late last month
JOHN MCCAIN: “LGBT or border security? I’ll tell you what my priorities are. So again. If you’re going to load it up with social issues, that is the best way to derail it in my view.”
But Lim and activists across the country are sending the message that:
LIM: “It will not be comprehensive unless LGBT families are included.”
For Jesus Rodriguez, whose deportation case is working its way through court, it’s become a race against the clock to see which reform, if any, will allow him and his husband to stay together.
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