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"screwed" by uckhet on flickr
The Obama Administration has denied the request of a married couple in San Francisco, ordering the expulsion of one spouse who is the primary caregiver of his legally married husband with AIDS.
Team Obama is incapable of valuing our actual relationships, while making pretty speeches about DOMA’s unconstitutionality.
Bradford Wells, a U.S. citizen, and Anthony John Makk, a citizen of Australia, were married seven years ago in Massachusetts. They have lived together 19 years, mostly in an apartment in the Castro district. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied Makk’s application to be considered for permanent residency as a spouse of an American citizen, citing the 1996 law that denies all federal benefits to same-sex couples.
Mr Wells states his case plainly:
“I’m married just like any other married person in this country,” Wells said. “At this point, the government can come in and take my husband and deport him. It’s infuriating. It’s upsetting. I have no power, no right to keep my husband in this country. I love this country, I live here, I pay taxes and I have no right to share my home with the person I married.”
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a part of Homeland Security, stated they do not find the relationship to be “petitionable:”
The agency’s decision cited the Defense of Marriage Act as the reason for the denial of an I-130 visa, or spousal petition that could allow Makk to apply for permanent U.S. residency. “The claimed relationship between the petitioner and the beneficiary is not a petitionable relationship,” the decision said. “For a relationship to qualify as a marriage for purposes of federal law, one partner must be a man and the other a woman.”
Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder decided earlier this year that the law, commonly known as DOMA, is unconstitutional on equal protection grounds and that the administration would no longer defend it in court. House Republicans hired an outside counsel to defend it instead. However, the administration said it would continue to enforce the law, while exercising discretion on a case-by-case basis.
A case-by-case basis that appears to exclude a legally married gay couple who have been together 19 years, one of whom is the AIDS caregiver for a United States citizen, along with owning rental property in the United States and starting a business here. Surely this is the kind of case where case-by-case basis discretion might apply. Why would this Australian’s deportation be prioritized? Aren’t there other, higher priority immigration matters?
Not in the Obama Administration, whose leader delights in happy talk at cocktail parties with DC-important LGBT apologists for his behavior, promising the moon on DOMA in the abstract, while acting against a legally married couple facing separation at the end of this month, via deportation. Obama’s ICE director has provided guidance to local agency heads about which cases deserve the full attention of their offices:
The memorandum said prosecutions should seek to promote “national security, border security, public safety and the integrity of the immigration system.”
Makk meets several of the circumstances specified in the memorandum. Aside from being a spouse of an American citizen, he is also the primary caretaker of a citizen, has no criminal history, and has legally resided in the country under various visas for many years.
The Obama Administration may love our gay votes, and they may love our gay money, but this single example proves how shabbily Team Obama treats our actual gay selves.
31 Comments
I cannot imagine the position this couple is in. How inhumane is this?
How in the world can they cite DOMA when it is currently declared unconstitutional (yeah, I know, Boehner found money to fight that) and the Admin has said they won’t defend it?
I’m inclined to believe that this is stupidity below Obama. Even if he’s secretly in favor of things such as this, I can’t believe he would permit it right when he needs GLBT support.
Boxturtle (Otoh, never misunderestimate stupidity)
I see the button under each comment that says “Flag this comment as inappropriate” — but where’s the button that says “Flag this policy as inappropriate”?
Great diary, Teddy, though it’s amazingly sad that it had to be written.
In the link you gave at the top from SF Gate, their story ends with this:
It would be great if Nancy could push DHS to grant a “case by case” exemption here.
Finally, I wonder what the host of Obama’s next Bay area fundraiser (whenever and wherever that might be) thinks of this.
Send a copy of this post to Obama!
He really does seem to me at times to exhibit sociopathic tendencies. He can mime expressions of sincerity and sympathy, but I get no sense of any real feeling behind his social mask.
OK so now tell me why Dennis Kucinich’s British wife hasn’t been hunted down for deportation? Will she get to stay indefinitely incarcerated away from her American spouse in CCA’s Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, GA like Pedro Guzman while family members go to court for her release? Spare me the “White House Staff: It Gets Better” videos.
Obama’s defense will be that DOMA is still the law of the land. Saying that while simultaneously saying that he thinks it should NOT BE, just let’s him off the hook. As usual, watch what he does, not what he says. The two are rarely the same.
Kuchinich’s wife would be legally defined as “petitionable” under DOMA.
happy talk at cocktail parties with DC-important LGBT apologists for his behavior
What an A*& 0 and his govt are. How Sad
There’s a consistency about O’s policies, a thread that runs through them all. It’s cruelty.
This is terrible news. I’m sorry to hear about this. Real sorry.
If anyone were to ever write an honest biography of Obama, they should use Teddy’s phrase in para two as the title: While making pretty speeches.”
“where’s the button that says “Flag this policy as inappropriate”?”
There will be one of those in the voting booth next November.
This couple’s predicament is precisely the kind of situation that years ago led to my seeing gay marriage as a matter of civil rights.
Surely it is possible to consider Mr. Makk’s total record of law-observant and constructive behavior as support for permanent residency, until this DOMA boobytrap is removed.
I must say, that from the experience of many colleagues and friends with ICE and its predecessors, the whole matter of immigration enforcement seems long to have been one of the more horrid mental backwaters of the federal government.
Hopefully,the Supreme Court will throw out DOMA on State’s rights grounds,the Federal government cannot discriminate towards marriages recognized by a sovereign state.When this law was passed in 1996,I believe that no state at th time recognized gay marriage.There are many conservative states rights people who have said that DOMA is unconstitutional and hopefully.at least one of the five conservatives on the Court will be in agreement,peronally,I think the vote could be at least 7-2 against this unjust law.
I don’t know why they didn’t move to Australia. I imagine Australia would not accept someone with aids. Catch-22.
Truly, with the question of what part of Legal do they not understand? Do these folks look for people to hurt?
It reminds me of the Trust Territories in the Pacific, which when I visited them in the early 80s were dumping grounds for administrators who failed at running native American reservations!
I know Obama is supposedly a Constitutional Lawyer, but does anyone know which Constitution he follows?
Dennis Miller calls him a “killing machine.” I used to object….
Obama defended DOMA for 2+ years saying he had to because it is the law of the land. Now he refuses to defend “part” of it and Boehner has taken up the cause. This is a clear change of policy and we deserve an explanation from Obama. Is he admitting he was wrong for 2 years? Was there a specific event that changed his mind? Does he support marriage equality or does he support discrimination against gay people?
You are correct about that, iirc. Also, Bradford’s doctors, health care providers, and health insurance is all US-based. It’s unlikely he could emigrate to Australia; most former Commonwealth countries make you prove you won’t become a burden to the state, which he probably cannot prove.
Well, we will know soon enough – he has the power to stop it.
The Obama administration sued the sellers of this book, by Larry Sinclair, but the judge threw out the suit and so it’s at Amazon now.
I haven’t read the book but heard about it via Wayne Madsen Report. The book reports that Obama is one of those politician fellows who attack LGBT constantly but do it from their closet. Has anyone here read it and found it convincing or otherwise?
http://www.amazon.com/Barack-Obama-Larry-Sinclair-Cocaine/dp/0578013878
Given the discretion the managers have to deal with cases, it certainly seems that way, yes. How anyone could look at the circumstances of this case and say, sure, it meets the criteria for applying ANY resources at all to it — it’s absurd.
If there’s ever been a greater need for the phrase, “Don’t you bureaucrats have ANYTHING better to do?” I can’t imagine it.
Good question, it certainly does not seem to be ours.
I remember seeing a video that Larry Sinclair made in 2008, claiming to have had sex and done coke with Obama in the back of a limo. In my view, if Obama has secret gay sex and does drugs in the back of a limo, it ain’t gonna be with Larry Sinclair.
But there’s no accounting for taste.
Well, if he’s a sociopath, sending the post won’t do much good, will it? He’ll probably wank off to it like W did to the torture tapes.
No, not really (except his re-election) and he doesn’t know.
Obama is a fraud.
Unspeakable. Utterly unspeakable. My partner and I take care of each other as caregivers. I am so finished with this fraud of a President. I am so through. It is time for a genuine person to have his seat in the Oval Office. I am ashamed of this used car salesman who is so harming us all.
http://gayusathemovie.com/2011/08/uafa-asleep-while-husband-of-spouse-with-aids-denied-petition-for-green-card/ This is the reason why we need our LGBT advocacy organizations to start thinking out of the box, with a creative idea such as some form of interim status pending DOMA’s repeal.
While same sex spouses have been apart for years, living in exile, separated from loved ones, living in fear, Congress and advocacy groups have been kicking the “Permanent Partners Immigration Act” – morphed into the “Uniting American Families Act” around like a soccer ball – playing at the expense of a broad community, who have been denied the very basic constitutional and human right to happiness.