From Zack Ford over at ThinkProgress:
The Department of Homeland Security announced today that same-sex families will soon be able to cross the border together, filing just one form for all “members of a family residing in one household.”
Departmental policy at Homeland Security currently specifies married couples and families headed by married couples as being allowed to fill out a single form. Due to the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government is prohibited from recognizing the legal marriages of same-sex couples, meaning that America’s borders are being used to erase our families.
Ford notes that the proposed change will undergo a series of reviews and be open to public comment before it takes effect.
My husband and I filled out a single customs form when we re-entered the United States in 2009 after spending three months backpacking in Europe. We watched straight couples breeze through the border checkpoint at New York’s JFK Airport with ease, but when our turn came, we were told that we did not qualify as a family and consequently needed to fill out two forms. When we protested, citing the fact that our legal marriage was recognized in a handful of U.S. states, we were taken by a rather surly customs official into another room and grilled. We nearly missed our connecting flight as a result. I cannot imagine how many times this kind of dehumanizing degradation has been repeated at entry points around the United States.
This proposed change is a very important one whose time has come and I applaud the Obama administration for taking yet another step to affirm the basic human dignity of LGBT people, couples, and families.
h/t: Jeremy Hooper
this nearly happened to us to, when coming back from Canada. It is humiliating and hurtful to us…but I could only think of how disorienting and terrifying it must be for a same sex couple with KIDS. The official looking man in the uniform just told your mom and momma or daddy and papa that they, and by extension YOU, in all your 9 or 7 or 11 year old wide eyed fear are NOT a real couple/family.
That must be…terrifying.
I asked the smart a*s who took US into a room like that if this had happened, and how did he deal with the terror on the kids part, and his smug prick demeaner faded quick enough.
As it happens, we missed OUR flight.
This is potentially great news indeed!
P.S. All, the hubby is (slowly) healing, and can get around on a walker or cane. :)
>”be open to public comment before it takes effect”
Cue hate group screeching in 3..2..1
I am glad to know this change is happening. My husband and I traveled back and forth from Seattle to London for three years and always filled out two forms. Then in 2010 when we returned to the US from our honeymoon, landing in Dallas, we presented one form. The agent asked how we were related. We responded, “We are married. We are coming home from our honeymoon.” He responded, “Sounds like you are a family. Congratulations and welcome home.” We were a little surprised and very happy that an agent of the government recognized us as married. I guess we just assumed that the policy already allowed us to use one form.
My husband and I travel from California to Mexico and back several times a year. Since being married in California in 2008 we started filling out one form. Always on the return flight home the airline announces one form per family. They never announce one form per married, heterosexual family, so that is what we do. We have been hassled twice about it both at San Francisco and Los Angeles Immigration points, the other times not. For the simple reason it is applied inconsistently is reason enough to get rid of it, let alone it is discriminatory and unfair.
My partner and I were asked once why we filled out one form (I’m American, she’s Canadian and we live in Toronto) while travelling home to Florida. I replied that we lived in the same household. I didn’t even evoke our marriage, yet the agent very nastily pointed at us, with our children standing right there, and said “we don’t recognize YOU!” His sentence not only wiped out our marriage and our family, but our existence. nice. We travel to Florida about twice a year and it’s always extremely stressful for me and by extension my family. What if an agent chose to let me in but not my Canadian family? It’s completely arbitrary and while this one form idea is nice, it by no means deals with the completely inconsistent treatment we receive at the border.
I THINK IT SUX THAT THEY WON’T LET ALLOW ME TO TRAVEL IN THE U.S. WITH MY HUSBAND AND HIS HOT YOUNG LOVER! I HATE IT WHEN I HAVE TO TRAVEL WITH JUST MY HUSBAND! THIS LAW NEEDS UPDATING! IT SUX IN IT’S CURRENT FORM! IT DOESN’T RECOGNIZE ME OR MY FAMILY SITUATION AND NEEDS TO BE FIXED TO ALLOW FOR AS MANY HUSBANDS AND LOVERS I WANT TO TRAVEL WITH! I’M BEING DISCRIMINTATED AGAINST! MIGHT AS WELL BE LIVING IN THE 1800′S WITH THIS KIND OF UNREALISTIC BURDEN!
@ricky lee
Imagining water on that slope doesn’t make it slippery.
[...] you happen to be married to a citizen of a foreign country, re-entering the United States after a trip abroad, adopting a child, or dealing with the death of a spouse (and if you are, my [...]