Thread: Federal marriage ban harms local couple

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Issue Date: 03/02/2006, Posted On: 3/2/2006

Federal marriage ban harms local couple


Laura Kiritsy
lkiritsy@baywindows.com

Framingham pair cannot marry without risking criminal prosecution, deportation

Like more than a thousand same-sex couples across the state on May 17, 2004 Seth Sommers and Lucas Mendes headed to their local town hall to apply for a marriage license. The woman behind the counter was eager to assist; she even snapped a few photos of the happy couple proudly displaying their paperwork. Sommers’s younger brother and his wife sent a pair of wedding rings; another sister-in-law dreamed of making wedding decorations. Sommers’s parents were overjoyed. But the more Sommers thought about it, the more he realized that if he married Mendes, he’d be making a big mistake.

That was pretty much the end of their wedding planning. They filled out the application and received a marriage license, which has since expired given that they did not marry within the 60-day period in which the license, which is in an envelope on top of their refrigerator, was active. But far from being a runaway bride, Sommers was trying to preserve his four-year relationship with Mendes, who is an undocumented immigrant from Brazil. Because the federal government does not recognize same-sex marriage, the right to marry in Massachusetts is legally meaningless to the Framingham-area couple, who asked that their real names be withheld. Unlike a heterosexual American citizen, Sommers could not sponsor Mendes for permanent citizenship if they married; in fact, if they did choose to marry, Mendes’ illegal status could be exposed to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and he could wind up being deported. As Sommers correctly points out, “There weren’t any benefits at all, the way I saw it, to marrying him.”

Sommers, 39, and Mendes, 37, are one of roughly 36,000 binational same-sex couples impacted by the United States according to 2000 census figures. “That’s likely an undercount,” says Adam Francoeur, program director for Immigration Equality, a national organization that advocates immigration reform for LGBT and HIV positive people, who notes that the census numbers do not account for binational couples who don’t live together, those who have been forced abroad or into exile because of their situation or those who are homeless. Many live precariously — particularly in the post-9/11 era of immigration crackdown — after the foreign-born partner’s student, tourist or work visa expires, going to great lengths to keep their status a secret. Sommers and Mendes, who entered the United States illegally, live daily with the threat of Mendes’s discovery and certain deportation. For both partners the pressure “is immense,” says Sommers.

“It’s crushing almost.” Adding to the stress is the fact that Mendes’ valid driver’s license, which he obtained illegally in Florida, is set to expire in December. It’s the only seemingly legitimate proof that he is allowed to be in this country; it has also enabled him to secure and maintain employment.

“The environment is really difficult right now for especially couples where one partner is undocumented,” says Francoeur, noting that passage of the Real ID Act — a law aimed at reducing illegal immigration — in 2005 has made it even more difficult to obtain driver’s licenses or other forms of identification. “For gay couples, short of illegal options like fraudulent marriages or something like that, there are few options.”

Sommers and Mendes are fearful that Mendes’s attempt to renew his driver’s license might not be so easy this time around; with legal guidance they’re hoping to find a legal loophole for Mendes. Meanwhile, they’re also potentially pursuing an option more risky even than marrying each other: finding Mendes a wife. “At this point,” says Sommers, “that’s the avenue — the one certain avenue — that guarantees a green card.”

That’s not a move Immigration Equality advocates, says Francoeur, who adds that in the current environment, marriage fraud is “more risky than ever.” Not to mention the penalties: detention and deportation of the foreign born partner; the American partner faces a $250,000 fine and five years in jail. “This isn’t an act that goes under the radar and has no consequences other than the deportation of their partner, which [binational gay couples] see as an inevitability oftentimes if they don’t engage in this type of behavior,” says Francoeur. “But all of that said it certainly is difficult to … grapple with essentially lawbreaking in order to remain together as a couple. It just shows the difficult environment that these couples navigate and operate within and the need for positive reforms so that these sort of options aren’t what otherwise law-abiding couples are facing.”

Efforts have been made to remedy the injustices same-sex binational couples face in the U.S. but it’s unlikely that they’ll be fixed any time soon. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) filed the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA) a bill that would allow gay Americans to sponsor their foreign-born partners for citizenship provided they meet the same criteria as married heterosexual couples. The UAFA currently has 10 Senate sponsors and 93 House sponsors, but it’s unlikely to see any action during the current congressional session.

Despite the risks, Sommers has few qualms about the illegalities required to hold on to his relationship with Mendes. “I think it’s not against the law to fall in love with someone,” he says. “That’s my feeling. I don’t feel like I’m breaking any law with God because he’s the one that brought us together. As far as living outside the law when it comes to having [a partner] who is not legal, it’s easily remedied if you’re heterosexual, you just get married. It’s not easily remedied when you’re gay.”

As for the right to marry Mendes, the softspoken Sommers notes with a slight trace of bitterness, “I have it. I already have that right. It’s mine. There are people out there that want to take it away. It’s very important that I have the right to marry who I fall in love with.”

Sommers was smitten instantly when he first spotted Mendes while doing his shopping at a local Stop & Stop where Mendes was working at the time. Over the course of about six months Sommers cruised the aisles hoping to bump into Mendes while he picked up a few items. He sometimes made trips to the store expressly for that purpose; when he realized Mendes wasn’t at work he’d put his groceries back on the shelf and leave. When he finally worked up the courage to speak to Mendes, they actually talked about the weather. Sommers paid for his groceries walked out the door and came face to face with Mendes again. “So he’s looking at me, and I walked by him and then I said to myself, ‘Dammit turn around and ask him his name,’” Sommers recalls with a laugh. “So I did, and he told me and it went on from there.” The two began dating and, says Sommers, “there was just something about him … how can I put it? Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew he was the one that I would like to be with.”

Early in the relationship, Mendes told Sommers he had a green card but Sommers didn’t think much about it anyway. “You don’t think about things like that when you meet somebody,” he says. “It shouldn’t matter what their background is as long as they’re not some sort of axe-murderer or something.” When Mendes confessed a few months later that he didn’t actually have a green card, Sommers began researching the issue and trying to help. He didn’t have much choice by that point: “I fell deeply in love with him,” says Sommers. “He’s the person I’ve been searching for my entire life.”

Ditto for Mendes, who had never been in a serious long-term relationship prior to meeting Sommers. “[He’s] like my father, my brother, my teacher,” Mendes says of his partner. “He’d do anything for me, I’d do anything for him.” Mendes came to the United States in 1999 at the urging of his brother to find a better life after the grocery store at which he worked in Brazil for 11 years went out of business. He lived with his brother for two years, until he and Sommers decided to move in together, about eight months into their relationship.

The relationship and the move required Mendes to take the difficult step of coming out to his devout Catholic family. “It was very, very tough in the beginning to show my family I loved someone of the same sex,” says Mendes, “but now everything is fine.” Mendes’s mother, who visits about once a year, “loves very much him and he’s a part of the family right now. She says, ‘[Seth] for me is like another son,’” says Mendes. And though he struggled for about a year, Mendes’s brother, who lives in the area with his family, has finally come to a place of acceptance.
But for all the happiness Mendes has found in the United States, his illegal status prevents him from traveling freely between his native country and his home in Massachusetts. “Now I’m trapped,” says Mendes. “I can’t fly to my country to see my family. I can’t show him to my family.” Mendes has not seen his 85-year-old grandmother and other extended family members to whom he is close, since he left. And they have yet to meet the man he loves.

Sommers, who is one of six children, says his family has also been supportive of his relationship with Mendes. Ironically his greatest source of support has been his eldest sibling, a sister, who fell in love with a Brazilian man in 1989. The couple is now happily married with three children. Needless to say, it was not a problem for Sommers’s brother-in-law to obtain his green card once he got married. The family travels freely between their home in Florida and Brazil. Sommers acknowledges that the ease with which his sister settled into a situation that remains out of his reach sometime induces pangs of jealousy.

But Sommers is well aware that his anger is not with his sister, it’s with a government that he says is making it impossible to live a normal life. “We are very much in love and I should be able to marry him and be able to stay with him and be able to travel with him and be able to share his family where he’s sharing my family now. It’s all a part of two people being in love — sharing one another’s families and company and living very, very happy healthy lives,” says Sommers. “And this government, they make it nearly impossible for you to conduct any kind of relationship with someone like that.”

They sure do spend a lot of time trying to figure out their going to break the law next. Such fine upstanding people.

They sure do spend a lot of time trying to figure out their going to break the law next. Such fine upstanding people.

See? They are just here to work. They work very hard at eliminating the obstacles to their illegal existence in this country. That is the part the president doesn't tell you when he so vociferously defends them.