· Border Crossing Law Firm Archive · By Shahid Haque · From the Border Crossing Law Firm media archive.
Writing for Out Words, Shahid explains how federal immigration law kept many same-sex couples apart even when their marriages were valid under state law. He traces the history of LGBTQ exclusion, the effect of the Defense of Marriage Act, the limited alternatives through employment or asylum, and the need to treat LGBTQ rights and immigrant rights as connected human-rights issues.
Published in 2010, the article captures the law before the federal government recognized same-sex marriages for immigration purposes. For LGBTQ Montanans with foreign-born partners, the ordinary family-based path available to different-sex married couples simply did not exist.