From Venice, pair navigates visa confusion

Chicago is roughly 760 miles from Philadelphia. Yet for nearly two years, Daniel ’07, who worked in Philadelphia after graduation, and his partner Andres, who worked in Chicago, took turns to make the long journey every weekend, or at least every other weekend, to see each other.

Last year, cutbacks in state funding to public high schools cost Andres, a Spanish national, his job as a language teacher. Confronted with separation, Daniel left his dream job of teaching bilingual high school students in both Spanish and English and followed Andres to Italy.

While the struggles of married, binational same-sex couples against the Defense of Marriage Act have grabbed headlines across the nation, unmarried couples such as Daniel and Andres — whose names have been changed to protect their identities — also endure both legal and immigration-related hurdles that their binational heterosexual peers do not.

“Gay couples go to huge lengths, are bankrupt in many of them, have to leave their countries, aren’t able to see ailing or dying or sick parents because they’ve left for someone else, have to disrupt their businesses often because they have a steady business in the United States but they leave because they want to stay with their partner,” Daniel said. “You lose access to jobs, you lose access to career paths and to basic rights.”

The couple met in spring 2008 while Daniel was working toward his master’s degree in Barcelona.

“We could get married in Spain,” Daniel said. “We didn’t have to because I’m lucky enough to have dual citizenship. Because of that, I can live anywhere I want to in Europe, but he can’t do that in the United States.”

According to Daniel, if a foreign national discloses being in a same-sex relationship with an American, his or her chances of entering the United States are jeopardized.

“If they know that a noncitizen has a relationship with a citizen with a potential for overstay, then they won’t let you into a country,” he said. “If they knew that we were together, they wouldn’t let him into the country. They would think there is a potential that he might overstay his visa.”

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Daniel added that Andres consequently has to lie every time he goes through customs.

“I know lots and lots and lots of people who have been refused entry into the country,” Daniel explained, adding that some people opt not to get married in foreign countries where same-sex marriage is legal because a marriage could prevent them from being granted a visa to the United States.

If foreign same-sex spouses come to the United States with a U.S. citizen, he explained, U.S. Immigration might deny visa privileges to the spouse out of fear that they will be tempted to overstay their visa dates to be with their spouse, though same-sex marriages are not federally recognized under DOMA.

“I know lots of people who have turned away [with a] ‘You can’t come back for three years, five years, 10 years’ kind of deal because of this information,” he added.

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Daniel explained that heterosexual binational couples, on the other hand, have the option of applying for a non-immigrant, K-1 Fiance visa if the couple marries within a month of entering the United States. They are also given more flexibility and treated with greater respect, he said.

“If you say that [you are unmarried] to a customs officer and you are a heterosexual couple, they wouldn’t blink,” Daniel said. “They might say, ‘Are you planning on getting married? ... How long are you staying here for?’ But they wouldn’t say, ‘No, you can’t come in.’ ”

“It’s totally unfair,” Daniel added. “Straight couples can get married and have their papers within a few months.”

Couples like Daniel and Andres could find a possible solution through the Uniting American Families Act, most recently introduced during the 112th Congress by Congressman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., that seeks to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to level the playing field for LGBT couples.

If the bill is passed, the “permanent partners” of American citizens and permanent residents would be eligible for permanent residency similar to the spouses of Americans in heterosexual relationships. Both partners would have to be at least 18 years old, financially interdependent and express a lifelong commitment to their relationship.

To address possible immigration fraud, the bill would allow people in false relationships to be imprisoned for up to five years, fined $250,000 or both. The sponsored partner’s immigration status may also be called into question if the relationship ends within two years of their application for residency.

Still, Daniel said, “DOMA would be a much more complete solution.”

“I don’t think that rights should be limited,” he said. “The UAFA would be a very partial solution, but it would help ... I think [the UAFA] had the highest number of sponsors of any LGBT rights bill in the last Congress. So it is a pretty big deal.”

However, UAFA currently has little support from Republicans, and many critics view it as controversial because it could increase what they say is illegal immigration.

Critics also oppose the act because it would grant couples who could marry in other countries and states, but have chosen not to, the same immigration rights as married couples.

Until immigration laws change, Daniel and Andres may have to remain abroad. The couple lives in Venice, where Andres teaches at a university, and they said they were mostly happy about how people have socially received them in Italy, Barcelona and the United States.

However, while Daniel described Venice as “the gay-friendly city without a gay life,” he explained that the rest of Italy, a Catholic nation that does not legally recognize any form of same-sex unions, is not as accommodating.

“Obviously, there are places where we don’t talk about it openly,” he explained. The couple said they remain closeted in the workplace.

“It’s still very behind,” Andres said of the country. “Barcelona is very, very, very open ... [In Italy] there’s violence, constantly. Constantly, there are cases of the media reporting that a gay couple was attacked for holding their hands, waiting for the metro, hanging out at a bar or something.”

“In Italy, there’s a threat,” he said.

Nevertheless, Daniel said he was grateful that Italy is “not one of those places” where a person can be murdered for being gay.

“Obviously, I feel comfortable here, in Europe,” he said. “I don’t dislike it. But I feel that it’s unfair that we don’t have the right to stay in the U.S. and that we don’t have the right to choose to go there, some other year.”

“We’re doing well,” Daniel explained. “We don’t have any complaints, except for that one unfair law.”