Wendy Daw, a U.S. citizen, is thirty-seven; Belinda Ryan, from Britain, is forty. We listened to them on a sunny afternoon in their modest home in California’s East Bay. “It’s time to speak out,” Belinda kept saying. They have become activists for the unrecognized rights of couples like themselves. Wendy tells how their love, and trouble, started: That first six months was pretty wonderful. I had just started at graduate school; Belinda had moved to this country; she was here in the Bay Area studying to be a helicopter pilot. And then she finished school. And that was when we started to realize the predicament: wow, this was serious. She was allowed to find a job under the student visa, so she started Read Belinda's and Wendy's Story (Part One)

We live with this so constantly that we lose track of how it affects us. I am not willing to put my energy into building up a really great practice or starting up an office or establishing myself really well—because there’s this sense that right when it starts to take off, we’ll leave, and I will have invested all that time and energy and money into a life that I will just have to walk away from… The profound effect it has all had, on the choices I have made in my life…I’m a good doctor, and I am not using it to the fullest. Of course, there’s no guarantee of anything in life. But here there’s something wrong—whether you go or stay is not your decision, is at the mercy of somebody else. … I come to realize it has had a really undermining effect on how I live my life.Some people say, Well, she has to leave, but you don’t have to. I say: If your husband got kicked out of the country, wouldn’t you go with him? They don’t recognize that Read Belinda's and Wend'ys Story (Part 2)

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Tags: Human Rights Watch, Family Unvalued, Out 4 Immigration, gay immigration, equality