Described by one attorney as a “game changer” that could bring parity to LGBT individuals in the U.S. immigration system, two district immigration offices have recently decided to put on hold marriage-based green card applications in cases involving binational gay couples.
Newsweek/The Daily Beast reported Friday that immigration offices in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. were putting green card applications and alien relative petitions involving married, binational gay couples on hold, effectively deferring potential deportation proceedings. The move comes just weeks after the Obama administration announced it would no longer defend Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act in several legal challenges against the 1996 law.
Whether the decisions reflect a broader policy change on the national level remains a matter of speculation. “We have not implemented any change in policy and intend to follow the president's directive to continue enforcing the law,” USCIS press secretary Christopher Bentley told Newsweek/The Daily Beast.
That statement is identical to one sent to The Advocate from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokeswoman regarding an ICE attorney’s agreement with immigration attorney Lavi Soloway last week to adjourn deportation hearings in the case ofMonica Alcota, an Argentine woman who married her American citizen spouse, Cristina Ojeda, last year in Connecticut (the couple lives in New York). Alcota and Ojeda are the first married gay couple to argue in court that a pending deportation should be suspended as a result of the Obama administration's February announcement regarding DOMA.
“For privacy reasons, we cannot comment on the specifics of this case without the individual’s consent,” ICE acting press secretary Barbara Gonzalez continued in an e-mail response. “What I can tell you, however, is that it is not uncommon for ICE to agree to adjournments.”
Reached on Sunday, Soloway said he intends to file three more green card applications on behalf of married, gay binational clients in the near future — none of whom are currently in deportation proceedings nor reside in the districts that have gone on record in putting a hold on such applications. “What’s happened around the country suggests that the policy is not limited to those district offices,” Soloway said. “There’s a strong indication that other districts either already are holding such cases in abeyance or will hold such cases in abeyance.”
“This is not about enforcing DOMA,” Soloway continued. “The question here is, What is the appropriate policy [for married binational gay couples] in the interim period when the law is subject to repeal and has been shown to be vulnerable to constitutional challenge in federal court?”
Soloway has repeatedly advised, however, that binational gay couples seek legal counsel prior to filing any marriage-based petition or green card application.
Over the past month, three Congressional representatives — Reps. Zoe Lofgren of California, and Jerrold Nadler and Joseph Crowley of New York, have all called on the administration to put on hold any deportation proceedings involving married, binational gay couples.
"Ultimately the DOMA law needs to be repealed,” Crowley told The Advocate last week. “But what’s paramount is that families need to be able to stay together."
Read the Newsweek/The Daily Beast piecehere.
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