One of the many areas where the discriminatory, religious based federal Defense of Marriage Act relegates LGBT Americans to less than full citizen status is in the area of foreign spouse immigration. For heterosexual married couples where one is a foreign national, all one needs to do is fill out the proper immigration forms and pay the applicable fee and the foreign spouse gains admission to and can remain in the USA. In the case of same sex couples, because of DOMA, the foreign spouse is treated as a complete legal stranger to their American spouse with the result that the foreign spouse faces deportation after their visa expires. All so that nasty, self-enriching Christianist political whores like Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins, et al, can feel better about themselves and superior to LGBT citizens. It's a situation that is beyond sick and needs to be ended. Now, while DOMA challenges continue to wind their way through the courts, the Obama, administration has belatedly moved to allow discretion in the prosecution of deportation cases that may allow more foreign spouses in same sex couples to remain in the USA. Here are highlights from MetroWeekly on the development:
Responding on behalf of President Barack Obama, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano today sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid detailing that the department is in the process of implementing changes to enable the government to focus its resources on high-priority immigration cases involving crime and other public safety concerns.
A senior administration official says the changes are aimed at moving prosecutorial discretion exercised by immigration enforcement officials from an "ad hoc" system to a system focused on the "highest priorities" that will "eliminate the lowest priority cases" – including, another senior administration official says, same-sex couples where one partner is facing deportation.
In response to a question from Metro Weekly about the impact of today's decision on same-sex couples, a second senior administration official said, "The prosecutorial discretion memo provides for the use of discretion for people with strong community ties, with community contributions and with family relationships. We consider LGBT families to be families in this context." Asked specifically if that included same-sex couples, the official said, "Yes."
The second official notes that there are 300,000 removal cases pending. Those whose removal cases are set aside will be eligible to apply for work permits, the second official said, but the decision about whether to grant them will be made on a case-by-case basis.
Attorney Lavi Soloway, whose work at Stop the Deportations has resulted in several couples where one partner was facing deportation having the deportation put on hold, called Napolitano's move ''historic.'' He told Metro Weekly, ''By undertaking a review of all pending deportation cases at the highest level and clarifying that existing prosecutorial discretion guidelines include LGBT families, Secretary Napolitano will now have the opportunity to stop every deportation involving a lesbian or gay binational couple.''
While this is a welcomed development, the real solution is to throw DOMA on the trash heap of history and remove Christianist religious based definitions of CIVIL marriage from the federal laws. As note before, DOMA makes a mockery of the alleged promise of religious freedom guaranteed to all citizens by the U. S. Constitution regardless of whether or not they conform to Christianist religious precepts.
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