A small item in the news this week reveals that the sub-agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that polices our borders and ports-of-entry is making plans to recognize same-sex couples so that more families can file a single Customs Declaration form when returning from travel abroad. If implemented, the new rules will mean that you and your partner will be able to fill out one customs form when you arrive in America and you will finally be able go up to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer’s desk together.
This simple step, one that heterosexual married couples take for granted, will apparently save the federal government up to 75,000 hours a year of customs agents’ time. Same-sex couples travel a lot!
But there’s a catch: even though that CBP officer serves two functions (customs and immigration control), that form only reflects that same-sex couples will be recognized as a family for the purposes of the customs part. As for immigration? If you’re in a same-sex binational relationship like me, an American citizen legally married to an Australian, you will continue to be regarded as “legal strangers.” That means being separated at the border.
My Australian wife has managed to stay in America for 11 years on a combination of work visas that have led to her successful filing for and approval of a green card. However, because of the current state of US immigration, green card processing is backlogged for several years.
While we wait for the backlog to clear, we will continue to be separated when re-entering America until someone in the Obama Administration figures out how to undo the double-talk and tiptoeing around the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and understands the impact of the real harm that this unconstitutional law causes.
When Viki and I re-enter the US, I go to the line that says “US Citizens and Permanent Residents”. Viki goes to the line for “Visitors” where she is fingerprinted, photographed and asked about her employment. My name is never mentioned, because at the border, our marriage is meaningless. Once again we are reminded of that dreadful terminology under which our relationship falls thanks to DOMA – “legal strangers.”
It is frustrating for us both as I collect the baggage and wait…and sometimes wait for what seems like a very long time, which sets off a panic. I become agitated, experience heart palpitations and my hands start to sweat. I fear that after a long plane ride, without much sleep Viki will misunderstand a question, lose her composure, be taken into secondary and have no way to contact me, in spite of having complied with every immigration requirement at every step of her journey to becoming a US permanent resident.
I am all too familiar with stories of same-sex binational couples being forcibly torn apart at the gate and entry denied to the foreign spouse. Reasons range from a customs official’s assessment that someone is entering the US too frequently on a tourist visa or a snafu in the paperwork. We are only ever one immigration officer’s opinion away from Viki being taken into secondary and questioned as to why she doesn’t have a green card yet. She’s been asked this once by an official who thought everyone who had an H1B visa for 6 years automatically got their green card – or left the country.
Just as you know what you’ll do in your home if there is an earthquake or a fire, I know what I will do if Viki does not eventually emerge from customs. I will call her immigration lawyer (as she won’t be allowed to make a phone call to him, much less me). I will call my friends at Out4Immigration and I will call the dynamic attorney who is single-handedly stopping deportations of same-sex foreign partners of US citizens, Lavi Soloway of Stop the Deportations: The DOMA Project.
I know that because Viki does indeed have a valid work visa, the “misunderstanding” will be cleared up. At my most irrational point while waiting to see my wife’s face again, smiling, and back on American linoleum at the baggage carousel, unscathed, I know if it’s not, we’ll move to Australia. While we also cannot enter that country together until we take the steps to have our relationship recognized by their federal government for immigration purposes, Australia does allow its citizens to sponsor same-sex partners for residency. That’s a huge step ahead of America.
But as an American citizen, that’s not the point. Our relationship should be recognized here by the federal government and we should have access to the 1,138 federal rights that DOMA currently bars same-sex couples from receiving. Incidentally, one of these rights is the right of an American citizen to sponsor their foreign partner for a green card. That’s one area where the green card backlog seems nonexistent. There’s a very good chance at some point DOMA will be repealed and I will be able to file a marriage-based application for Viki’s green card. That might come sooner than the backlog for work-based green cards is cleared.
Some brave same-sex binational couples working with Lavi Soloway are already challenging the spousal green card ban and filing applications. Like those attempting to enter the country through a border crossing with proper passports and visas in tow, who are at the mercy of a discerning customs official, these couples are at the mercy of an immigration judge, a deportation officer, an Immigration & Customs Enforcement prosecutor, or the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service bureaucracy – in some cases, all of them. Will the judge take into consideration the Obama Administration’s declaration in 2011 that DOMA is unconstitutional and hold a green card application in abeyance until DOMA is repealed? Or will a subsequent president come to power and decide to defend DOMA in court and unravel the small steps we’ve made toward getting DOMA off our backs and out of our lives?
Same-sex couples in general have their hands full with daily doses of discrimination and homophobia, but for those of us in binational relationships, the discrimination and homophobia always seem just a little closer to home. Maybe that’s because our home here in the United States is on such shaky ground, just one immigration official’s opinion away from shaking it to its very foundation. The fact that US customs is making plans to recognize same-sex couples at the border is a positive step. It opens the dialog for same-sex binational couples to point out that little fixes to inequality here and there will never be enough. Our marriages need access to all 1,138 federal rights, not just a few.
Kathy Drasky regularly writes about online culture. Her marketing and communications work with the ANZA Technology Network, Advance Global Australians and with various Australians and Australian enterprises has led to at least a dozen trips Down Under.
An accomplished digital photographer, her photos have appeared in 7×7 Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and Google Schmap.
