This is cross posted at Daily Kos, as part of O4I's efforts to build Congressional support for the rights of Americans in same-gender relationships to sponsor their foreign partners.
Since the entire text, cover and petition letter, is repeated on Change.org, I will withhold that text here to share a few thoughts about our struggles for immigration equality--but let me start by giving you the link to this week's Change.org petition to urge congressional support of the UAFA:
Needless to say, we are in a new chapter of our struggle for the right to choose who we bring into our families, and where we wish to live. We are seeing clear signs that our issues are gaining traction, whether from the stayed deportation of Henry Velandia, the actions of AG Eric Holder on a similar case--or the fact that the issue was on the front page of the national section of the New York Times yesterday. Not to mention the President's remarks on DOMA or the amazing attention Lavi Soloway is bringing to the issue. For years we've wished for this kind of press and attention to our plight. The long years of seemingly futile pushing are beginning to bear the fruits of momentum.
One of the things that has always struck me over the years is how people only seem to key in to the injustices of binationals when they fall in love with someone from another country. Only then do they find that, because of DOMA, they have no right to sponsor their loved one. And what's harder is that many of us don't wish to be activists, and without taking action we so often feel powerless, and so it can go in a vicious circle with damage being done and great stresses arising for the couples. I just know there are many of us out there. This is a fast world and this is a big country, and many of us are scattered with our loved ones to other lands--even as those of us who actively dialog on the issue seem so often to be small in number.
So we want love, but many of us have no interest in being political or activists, or showing ourselves to the world because we know how terribly this society has let itself treat us, and continues to do, whether though our deportations or separations or exiling or hiding. Being in a binational couple today I hate to say, at least in the US, kind of demands that you become an activist. You need to find the best way to be the citizen who shows how to live in opposition to how we are treated. At least to the extent you sign this petition. And get some people you know to do the same, whether by posting on Facebook, Twitter, emailing the above link to friends and family, or however you communicate with the people in your life.
Our moment is coming and we must keep up momentum. We must start finding our voice to say no to the way society has let itself treat us and our loved ones. Asking our elected representatives is one way to do this. People are beginning to take note in ways we've not seen before, even as the issue is being talked about on MSNBC and elsewhere. The culture is changing, many individuals know what we face is wrong, and the laws need to catch up with it. We have to continue to encourage our respective communities to support us and demand, along with us, respect for all families as an American value. We are making that happen. So sign! And pass that link along!
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