Immigration Equality Action Fund

Taking Action for ImmigrationEquality.org

Tell President Obama: Stop Separating Our Families!

Tell the White House to keep Bradford & Anthony and Frances & Takako — and other LGBT families — together!

We’ll send a fax directly to President Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano, and add your name to a petition calling on the Administration to halt the separation of LGBT families. The White House counts every fax, every signature – your participation makes a difference.

The government has denied the green card application that Bradford Wells, an American, filed for his Australian partner of 19 years, despite their legal marriage and strong ties to the U.S. This follows the heartbreaking story of Vermont native Frances Herbert and her Japanese partner, Takako Ueda, another married couple who are facing imminent separation after more than a decade together.

We need relief for these families and every family. Tell the government to stop ripping families apart.

Bradford & Anthony and Frances & Takako recently told their stories to CNN. Now, you can add your voice to theirs, and take a stand for all LGBT families.

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The Petition

Dear President Obama

Every day, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans with partners and spouses from abroad face an unconscionable choice between family and country. The Defense of Marriage Act bars LGBT Americans from sponsoring their spouses for residency in the United States.

That is wrong, and it must change.

The plight of these families is highlighted, in painful detail, by recent press coverage of Californian Bradford Wells and his partner Anthony Makk, and Vermont native Frances Herbert and her partner Takako Ueda.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied the green card application that Bradford filed for Anthony, his Australian partner of 19 years, despite their legal marriage and strong ties to the U.S. Frances and Takako, who have been committed to one another for 11 years and who are legally married, are hoping for a better outcome.

The government has the power to keep these families together. Your administration can — and should — allow lesbian and gay couples to remain together while the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act is challenged in the courts, and in Congress. You have acknowledged that DOMA is unconstitutional and indefensible. Why, then, are you letting it separate loving, married couples?

No American should have to choose between their beloved and their country.

We urge you to take action and instruct federal government agencies to halt the removal of LGBT spouses. There must be a moratorium on the separation of LGBT families while Congress, and the courts, review this injustice and end it once and for all.

We join the 60 Members of Congress who have asked the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to stop these separations. Loving families should not be forced to live under the threat of deportation, and American citizens should not have their families taken away.

Please, Mr. President: Take action — today — to keep Frances & Takako, Bradford & Anthony, and loving families like them together. No one is served by tearing families apart.

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