"Our nation is served when loving families are kept together. We need to ... relegate DOMA to the dustbin of history."For background, read Obama Enacts Same-sex 'Marriage' via Immigration and also read Obama Defeats Marriage, Again - Congress Responds and read the saga of President Obama's War on Marriage (DOMA) via Judges
-- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco Democrat
-- From "U.S. immigration to treat same-sex partners as relatives" by Ronnie Cohen, Reuters 9/29/12
The Obama administration has directed immigration officials to recognize same-sex partners as family members in deportation cases, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said on Friday.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Pelosi in a letter that she had ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to notify its field offices "that the interpretation of the phrase 'family relationships' includes long-term, same-sex partners."
Immigration officials last year said they would consider same-sex partnerships as family relations in deciding whether to deport undocumented immigrants.
But 83 members of Congress led by Pelosi and Jerrold Nadler of New York criticized the government for unevenly applying the directive, and they pressed for written guidelines.
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From "Gay couples may get reprieve in deportation cases" by The Associated Press 9/29/12
"I have directed ICE to disseminate written guidance to the field that the interpretation of the phrase 'family relationships' includes long-term, same-sex partners," Napolitano wrote, adding that the decision to grant reprieves still would be considered on a case-by-case basis.
The instructions do not mean that foreigners who are married to Americans of the same sex will be eligible for green cards or citizenship, as are immigrants with opposite sex spouses. The Obama administration is continuing to enforce a 1996 law [DOMA] that prohibits the government from recognizing same-sex marriages, even as it opposes it in court and takes gay relationships into account when evaluating deportation cases.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington group that advocates tighter immigration policies, said that even though the administration says it is complying with the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA] by not allowing citizens to sponsor same-sex spouses for green cards, the pending guidance for ICE officials to review the family ties of same-sex couples suggests otherwise.
"It's a camel's nose under the tent," Krikorian said. "If you get same-sex couples approved in terms of immigration, you can use that as an incremental approach to getting changes in other areas, such as in tax policy."
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