Gay Couples Celebrate Green Cards After looonng Waits
SUSAN WATTS/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Santiago Ortiz (left) and Pablo Garcia, showing his green card. Garcia, 53, spent two
decades as an undocumented immigrant in Queens to be with his husband,
Santiago Ortiz, a U.S. citizen.
When an immigration officer recently told Pablo Garcia he had been approved for a green card, scenes from the Venezuela-born playwright’s life flashed before his eyes.
“I saw when we came here, when we decided that I would stay here without documents, when I began at university, when my mother died, when my father died, everything. In one second, it was so hard,” he said.
Garcia, 53, spent two decades as an undocumented immigrant in Elmhurst, Queens, after deciding to overstay a visa to be with his husband, Santiago Ortiz, a U.S. citizen.
For most of their long relationship, Ortiz, 57, a retired school psychologist, was unable to sponsor Garcia — and being unable to leave the U.S. and return meant Garcia missed both of his parents’ funerals.
Their situation changed in June, when the Supreme Court struck down a federal law against gay marriage. Months later, some of the first same-sex New York City couples — including Garcia and Ortiz — have now been granted immigration benefits like permanent residency. Many gay and lesbian U.S. citizens have waited for decades to be able to sponsor their immigrant spouses. Even as New York and other states passed laws allowing gay marriage, the federal Defense of Marriage Act barred the government from granting any visas based on the relationship.
COURTESY HEATHER MORGANHarlem couple Heather Morgan and Maria del Mar Verdugo texted this photo to friends and family letting them know Verdugo's green card had arrived.
A week after June’s high court decision striking down DOMA, then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano directed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials to review petitions from a same-sex spouse in the same way they would a straight couple’s bid. As long as a couple was married in a state or foreign country that allows same-sex marriages, it does not matter for USCIS’ purposes if they live in a state that does not.
The first same-sex green card, according to lawyers who specialize in these cases, went to a Florida man and his Bulgarian-born spouse in late June. Since then, couples across the country have been approved.
In New York City, a group of couples — including Garcia and Ortiz — who had put in failed green card bids before the law changed, and became part of a class action suit challenging DOMA, are just now getting green cards in the mail. The agency immediately reopened their cases after the law changed. USCIS has not been keeping statistics on same-sex petitions, so it is unclear how many have been granted.
When Garcia told his lawyer, Tom Plummer, of the advocacy group Immigration Equality, that his green card arrived on Nov. 1, Plummer was overwhelmed.
“Pablo sent a picture of his green card, and I wanted to wallpaper my bedroom with it,” said Plummer, who has represented a series of same-sex couples since before the law changed.
“It’s incredible. I got chills every time they told a client family they were approved. These families have been so resilient for so many years,” he said.
CHRISTIE M FARRIELLA FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWSSteven Eng and Neal Stone with Neal's newly issued green card at their home in Jackson Heights on Nov. 16.
For Jackson Heights, Queens, couple Steven Eng and Neal Stone, the green card that arrived in the mail Nov. 15 brings new freedoms. Eng, a U.S. citizen, successfully sponsored Canadian-born Stone, who had been living and working in the U.S. using a series of employer-based visas.
“That was the first time I could do anything in the 12 years that we have been together to help him be by my side in this country,” said Eng, 42, a voice and speech professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Stone, 41, an urban planner, is now no longer tied to a single employer — and is looking forward to crossing the U.S.-Canada border without worrying about not being able to return.
“We can just follow our interests and have a little more fun,” he said.
Harlem couple Heather Morgan and Maria del Mar Verdugo prepared carefully for their USCIS interview earlier this month.
“We weren’t really nervous, we were really just excited,” said Morgan, a U.S. citizen who sponsored her Spanish-born wife, Verdugo, 44. “I thought it was going to be a little bit like ‘The Newlywed Game,’ where someone is trying to trip you up a little bit, where someone is going to sequester me and ask me, ‘Does Mar like mustard or ketchup on her hamburgers?’ And see if our answers matched up,” said Morgan, 37, a nonprofit marketing director.
In the end, the officer’s questions were much more straightforward. The card came in the mail on Nov. 18.
“We opened the mailbox and the green card was there. We were so happy,” said Verdugo.
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