This Way Out: Love Exiles & "Chris and Don" Overnight Productions, Inc. 15 Jul 2008 00:13 GMT Independent Media Center indymedia.org LoveExiles.org Music added: Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Report spotlights GLBT immigration challenges
House bill seeks to allow U.S. citizens to sponsor foreign same-sex partners
by Anthony Baldman, Reporter
Published Thursday, 18-May-2006 in issue 960
GLT - Gay and Lesbian Times (gaylesbiantimes.com)

SAN DIEGO - ...San Diego’s Nadine Jernewall and Sze Tan, a binational couple, have been active members of Equality California’s San Diego chapter. They met over three years ago online as friends and a romantic relationship blossomed shortly thereafter. “We were amazed at the connection we felt with each other and decided that we had to be together despite the odds we faced ahead of us,” Jernewall said, referring to the fact that Tan is not a U.S. citizen and first came to the U.S. on a student visa from Malaysia.

Jernewall said the biggest challenge they face as a binational couple is living with uncertainty on a daily basis. “Our being together is contingent upon Sze keeping her job with an employer who is willing to sponsor her working visa,” Jernewall said. Tan, who works as a software engineer, is now with an employer who is willing to sponsor her for a green card. Jernewall said Tan is lucky enough to be well-educated and to possess job skills deemed important to the U.S. economy, but many other people are not so fortunate, and are unable to obtain work visas. The couple does not know how long the process will take for Tan to receive her green card through her employer.

“It could be a year. It could be four years. While we feel lucky to even have this, it is still hard to plan a future when all this stuff is so up in the air,” Jernewall said. “If her company had to lay her off or something, we’d be back at square one.” The couple considered emigrating from the U.S. to Canada in order to remain together as a couple, Jernewall said.

“While Canada is a beautiful country, it was very difficult to accept that I, as a U.S. citizen, would have to leave my country and family in order to stay with my partner,” she said. “This is not something that heterosexual couples ever need to consider, since immigration laws recognize them as a family. The U.S., unfortunately, regards us as strangers when it comes to immigration. Our family is deemed unworthy of protection.” read full story GLT... (photo: Gay and Lesbian Times)

Tags: Love Exiles, Gay and Lesbian Times, gay immigration, equality

I moved to the Netherlands from the San Francisco Bay Area in March 2000 to be with my partner and future wife, Lin. Lin and I met in 1982 in Amsterdam and became close friends. Sixteen years later, our deep love for each other turned to passion, and we started a long distance commute, seeing each other whenever possible, and spending much of our time together on the telephone or online.After more than a year of flying back and forth for short visits, we decided we had had enough of the long distance relationship and that I should move to the Netherlands. We got engaged, promising to marry as soon as the Dutch changed the marriage law to include same-sex couples. (photo: Gon Buurman; Love Exiles)

We married on May 4, 2001. The story of our wedding appeared in the June 19, 2001, issue of The Advocate. Our wedding photos have appeared in the annual report of the Akzo Nobel Pension Fund, in several photo exhibitions, on the cover of the book Wij Gaan Ons Echt Verbinden, and in the Human Rights Watch report Family Unvalued. Since Lin's son was still in high school, Lin asked me to Read More Love Exiles

Martha McDevitt-Pugh, who left the United States in the end to be with her life partner, Lin, told us, “You don’t casually date someone across an ocean.”101 Yet many binational same-sex couples have to. Perhaps the non-U.S. partner cannot stay legally in the U.S.—or cannot even get a visa to enter it; perhaps the U.S. partner, for reasons of job or family, cannot move away. Couples hoping to build a life together are unable to create a common home. Plane tickets and phone calls become the lifelines on which a relationship survives. Also Human Rights Watch - Family, Unvalued.

Tags: Love Exiles, Human Rights Watch, Family Unvalued, gay immigration, equality