Feinstein wants identical policy for gay spouses
WASHINGTON — Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Tuesday that binational same-sex couples who are married should be treated the same as heterosexual couples in any immigration overhaul, resisting pressure from gay rights groups to allow any same-sex couple, wedded or not, to sponsor foreign partners for U.S. residence.
Feinstein, a California Democrat and senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she would offer an amendment reflecting her view as the committee begins a marathon effort Thursday to write the first major immigration law since 1986.
Gay and lesbian couples that include one foreigner make up only a tiny sliver of the immigrant population. But debate over how or whether to include them in legislation threatens the bipartisan effort by the “Gang of Eight”
group of senators to outline a path to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants.
“It’ll kill the bill,” Sen. Marco Rubio, the conservative Florida Republican who is a member of the bipartisan group, said of the amendment in an interview Tuesday.
“I mean, it’s hard enough as it is,” Rubio said. “There’s already resistance to the bill that’s currently structured, and to bring an issue like that onto it would not just ensure the bill doesn’t pass … it will fracture a coalition that’s been put together from all kinds of groups including evangelicals, the Catholic Church and others.”
Gay and lesbian couples are prohibited from sponsoring their foreign partners for permanent residence in the United States by the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which denies all spousal privileges and benefits under federal law to married same-sex couples. The law is under review by the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule on it by the end of June.
Making issue moot
If the court overturns the Defense of Marriage Act, also known as DOMA, the issue of married, same-sex binational couples would become moot because they would receive the same rights as straight foreign spouses.
The Williams Institute at UCLA, a think tank that researches gay issues, estimated that there are 28,500 same-sex couples in the United States in which one partner is a citizen and one is not. One such couple in San Francisco, Anthony John Makk and Bradford Wells, won a reprieve from Makk’s possible deportation to Australia last year through the intervention of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco.
Feinstein helped with their case and since 2009 has gone to the extraordinary length of sponsoring a “private bill” — legislation intended to apply only to a particular person or group of people — to keep together an unmarried lesbian binational couple, Shirley Tan and Jay Mercado, who reside in Pacifica with twin sons.
But Feinstein has not signed on to the Uniting American Families Act, which would grant immigration privileges to same-sex couples who are not married, as gay rights activists have long urged her to do.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Committee, on Tuesday introduced the Uniting American Families Act as an amendment to the immigration bill, as he promised.
Feinstein said in an interview that she will amend his amendment to ensure that gay and lesbian married couples are treated identically to straight couples. Straight cou-
ples are able to obtain a “fiancee visa,” which requires that the U.S. partner be a full citizen and that the couple marry within 90 days of the foreign partner entering the country.
‘Same as anybody else’
Her amendment will require, she said, that, “If you come over, you get married in this country within 90 days, same as anybody else that comes over, in one of the states that permits same-sex marriage.”
Feinstein said she does not support the wider Uniting American Families Act, because “they can get married in one of the states that permits marriage. Besides, we think … we’re going to pursue DOMA (repeal) and that will open it up even wider.”
Feinstein said she has always believed that married same-sex couples should be treated the same as straight couples under immigration law. “I don’t think that should be a problem for anyone,” she said.
Steve Ralls, a spokesman for Immigration Equality, a gay rights group, said in an e-mail that while his group is supporting the Uniting American Families Act, the group would “fully support” Feinstein’s version, too.
Rubio said he understands and respects the debate over same-sex marriage as more states, the latest being Delaware on Tuesday, legalize marriage between gays and lesbians. “I just think if it’s brought into this bill, it will ensure that it fails,” he said.
Is it homophobia?
The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT rights group, issued a statement accusing Republicans of homophobia.
If same-sex couples are excluded from the immigration bill, Republicans “should just own it and call it what it is: homophobia,” said spokesman Fred Sainz. “Labeling the inclusion of binational couples in the immigration bill as toxic is nothing more than a tired, insulting ruse designed to distract attention from their own failure to represent all Americans.”
President Obama, touting a possible U.S. immigration overhaul Monday on a trip to Costa Rica, said the issue should not be allowed to kill the immigration bill.
“I can tell you I think that this provision is the right thing to do,” Obama said. “I can also tell you I’m not going to get everything I want in this bill. Republicans are not going to get everything they want in this bill.”