Better but Not Perfect

Aaron over at Adventures By Aaron talks this morning about some of the challenges still facing same-sex couples joining the Foreign Service. He says:

"Under Secretary Clinton, the partners of Foreign Service Officers are now counted as Eligible Family Members (EFMs), which impacts the square footage provided to the FSO's in their overseas assignments. I now qualify for emergency evacuation in times of crisis. I am able to get a job in a consulate or embassy and earn a salary in US dollars vs. local currency. I am provided all of the tools necessary to learn the language spoken at our post.

Our biggest concern is the continued inability for me to obtain health care benefits under TJ's plan. It is not enough to be an EFM. We must be in a federally recognized marriage for me to qualify for health care. What this means is that, unlike any other spouse, I must find employment when we leave the country. It means that, when I quit my job in September to start language training, I will either be without medical coverage, or will have to pay higher premiums for private coverage."

It is worth remembering that while we have come a long way, we are still a long way from full equality. Consider if Aaron had been from another country, for example. Then not only would he not get health insurance, he would not even be able to live in the U.S. while his husband is doing a D.C. posting. And at the end of their careers serving this country, they would be unable to retire to the country they loved and had devoted their lives to.

PHB: New Documentary Highlights Plight of LGBT Binational Families

I found this piece today at Pam's House Blend.

This is an issue facing many LGBT Foreign Service families. Like our heterosexual colleagues, many LGBT Foreign Service officers and specialists find that special someone while serving the country overseas. But unlike our heterosexual colleagues, we are not entitled to expeditious naturalization of our foreign-born spouse. In fact, we are not entitled to petition for them to become American at all. We have difficulty serving in the US because our spouse can not get a long-term visa to the US (though efforts are being made to change that), and after years of serving our country, cannot retire to the country we devoted our lives to without splitting up our families.

New Documentary Highlights Plight of LGBT Binational Families
by: SteveR

On January 28, 2009, there was a knock on Shirley Tan's door.

The mother of two, originally from The Philippines, was starting her morning as usual. She was getting her 12-year-old twin sons ready for school, and preparing to see her partner of 23 years, Jay Mercado, off to work. The scene in their home in Pacifica, California, could have been any day in virtually any family's home in America.

That is, until the 7am knock on the door.

When Shirley answered, she was told that agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency were "looking for a young Mexican girl."

In fact, they were looking for her.

The ICE agents produced an order of deportation, which Shirley had never seen before, then handcuffed her and threw her into a waiting van.

Shirley, who had been violently assaulted by a relative in her native Philippines, was detained and told she would be sent back there because her application for asylum, filed years earlier, had been denied. Her attorney, who had moved since the original asylum request was filed, did not receive notice of the denial. Instantly, Shirley's entire family - and the life she had built over two decades with them - was in jeopardy.

SteveR :: New Documentary Highlights Plight of LGBT Binational Families

Despite the fact that Jay is an American citizen, and that both of her sons are also citizens, Shirley was faced with leaving all of them behind. Because Jay is also a woman, she could not sponsor Shirley for residency, as straight Americans with spouses can do. The twins would be unable to sponsor their mother for residency for another 9 years.

"[W]e can't even protect Shirley," Mercado says in a new film, directed by filmmaker Stewart Thorndike, released on Sunday by Immigration Equality, an organization working to end discrimination against lesbian and gay binational families. "They wanted us to be torn apart, and that's something you don't do to a family."

Yet, for more than 36,000 lesbian and gay families like Shirley and Jay's, separation is a very real possibility. Nearly half of those families, like the Tan-Mercados, are also raising young children.

"The lack of recognition for lesbian and gay couples under immigration law is, literally, ripping loving families apart," said Rachel B. Tiven, Immigration Equality's executive director. "For every day that passes without action from Congress, another family faces separation and another child is put in jeopardy of losing a parent."

"People of conscience cannot sit idly by and let this happen," she says. "A generation of children are at risk of losing the only families they know."

On Valentine's Day, house parties across the country screened the new documentary(see below). Its debut coincided with the launch of the Immigration Equality Action Fund, which will lobby Congress to pass an immigration reform bill that includes lesbian and gay families.

"This is our moment," Tiven said, referring to pledges by the White House and Congress to tackle immigration reform this year.

Tan remains in the country because of a rare "private bill" introduced on her behalf by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who sponsored the measure after hearing from many people in their community, including her parish priest, who weighed in on behalf of Tan, a Eucharistic minister in the local Catholic church.

Now, Tan and Mercado have joined Immigration Equality in working for passage of the Uniting American Families Act - a bill to end discrimination against lesbian and gay immigrant families - either on its own or as part of a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

"What will make me feel safe," Tan says in the film, "is [when] the Uniting American Families Act will pass . . . so I can stay here . . . without any fear that I can be picked up at any time; that I can be deported at any time."

It is a campaign that has taken on personal importance for her sons, Joriene and Jashley, too.
"Why is this happening to our family?," one asks in the film.

"My mom's a good person," his brother adds.

You can make an impact in the lives of Shirley, Jay and their sons - and tens of thousands of other families like theirs - by watching the video, passing it along and visiting http://www.immigrationequalityactionfund.org/ to learn more.

"We premiered this film on Valentine's Day," Tiven said, "in solidarity with every family who just wants to be with the people they love."