Congressional trio sends letter to support Dummerston couple (Brattleboro Reformer)

February 15, 2012

By Chris Garofalo

DUMMERSTON — Vermont’s congressional delegation is asking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to reconsider a December 2011 decision to deny a spousal green card for a Japanese woman legally married to her American wife.

U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernard Sanders and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch sent a letter to department Secretary Janet Napolitano urging Homeland Security (and its subsidiary Citizenship and Immigration Services) to re-evaluate its policy regarding marriage-based immigration petitions for same-sex spouses, particularly for Dummerston residents Frances Herbert and Takako Ueda.

The binational lesbian couple has been together for more than a decade and were legally married in Vermont last April, but the immigration agency denied the Japanese-born Ueda a spousal green card petition because their nuptials are not recognized at the federal level.

They argue that if not for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — the Obama Administration is looking to appeal the 1996 measure — the Herbert-Ueda petition would have been approved. Now the Green Mountain State’s trio on Capitol Hill ask that the department’s policy not to hold lesbian and gay spousal immigration cases like Herbert-Ueda in legal limbo, especially in states permitting same-sex marriage.

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