DOMA is a Truly Nasty Law

I woke up this morning thinking about DOMA. A truly nasty law. A law made to exclude some people from the opportunity to experience ever having their full rights as citizens. A law made to ensure that even if US citizens could find equality elsewhere in the world, they cannot have it in the United States.

Martha and I are first class citizens in the Netherlands. She is a US citizen and I am Australian. We live in the Netherlands. We both took on the Dutch nationality, in additional to our nationality by birth. Martha and I want to be able to live in her country of birth, care for her aging mother, be with family and have careers in the US. Normal things for any binational couple to want. We can't have them. DOMA stops us.


In the letter denying our Petition for Alien Relative (Form I-130), sent earlier this month, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Sevices write to Martha:

"Through your petition, you are seeking to classify the beneficiary [that's me, Lin] as immediate relative spouse of a United States citizen pursuant to section 201(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (the INA) as amended.

"This Petition for Alien Relative (I-130), filed on November 7, 2012, seeks to classify the beneficiary as the spouse of a United States citizen....The petition will be denied.

"Both you and the beneficiary are female. You married on [here they give the wrong date, Lin] in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The INA does not specifically define the term "spouse" with respect to gender, but Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) states for purposes of eligibility for federal benefits, "marriage" means "only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife" and the word "spouse" refers "only to the person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife." 1 U.S.C para 7. The DOMA applies as a matter of federal law whether or not your marriage is recognized under state law. Your spouse is not a person of the opposite sex. Therefore, under the DOMA your petition must be denied. We do not consider it necesary to determine whether your marriage is lawful under state law, or whether the beneficiary would be a spouse under the INA absent the DOMA, as these questions are not material to the appropriate disposition of the petition under the clearly applicable and controlling Federal statute."

The letter concludes by informing us of the possibilities of appeal.

It all feels sloppy and not right.

Our names were misspelled, our date of marriage wrong. The fact that there is a great deal of attention paid to state law infers that there is a form letter being used, dealing with petitioners married in the United States. We have a legal marriage in the Netherlands. We are not terribly interested in whether or not state laws apply.

Has some bureaucrat pulled out a template and filled in, between sedatives, the bits of information they felt like putting in there?

Are they unaware of the current controversy at the heart of which is DOMA?

Edie Windsor married the love of her life and when she died, 40 years later, Edie was left with a huge tax bill, because her marriage wasn't recognized. Their Canadian marriage was recognized by New York State, where Edie lives. On hearing of this the President, Barack Obama, declared his administration would not defend DOMA. In the Huffington Post article on this decision, you can read his entire statement. It begins with: "After careful consideration, including review of a recommendation from me, the President of the United States has made the determination that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA"), 1 U.S.C. § 7, as applied to same-sex couples who are legally married under state law, violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment."

We called friends in the USA yesterday and they told us that when they filed Petition, they were invited with their attorney to a meeting with a local official who asked a lot of questions to ascertain the validity of the petition. Their Petition has not yet been denied. We were not invited for any such conversation. We were summarily dismissed on grounds that even the President of the United States finds a violation of the Constitution.

Martha is living in exile in the Netherlands because she cannot sponsor me to live with her in the United States. She moved here 13 years ago, choosing to live with the love of her life rather than living without me and staying in the country of her birth. Now that our Petition has been denied I can't help but feel she is being sent into exile again.