Deportation looms for Filipina over gay marriage

SAN FRANCISCO — Pacifica housewife Shirley Tan needs a legal miracle and she needs it soon. After 20 years of building a life in the US with her partner Jay Mercado, raising 12-year-old twin sons and caring for her elderly mother-in-law, she now faces deportation to the Philippines within the month. On Jan. 28, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents acting on an outstanding deportation order took Tan, 43, into custody. “I really freaked out and told them I didn’t know anything about that," Mercado recalls. “I told them that we had a lawyer who was doing her papers, but they insisted on taking her." The office of Rep. Jackie Speirer (D-Hillsborough) intervened, and her stay was extended until April 22. Under the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between men and women, these women’s registered domestic partnership and their family mean nothing, rendering the couple legal strangers. “Because they’re a gay couple, there’s no way for Jay to sponsor Shirley for a green card," Amos Lim, a board member at immigration equality group Out4Immigration, said. “Straight couples have that right but it’s something that isn’t available to gay couples because we’re not considered family." O4I advocates the passage of the Uniting American Families Act of 2009, a law that would allow U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents to sponsor their same-sex partners for immigration. As of April 3, the UAFA won 95 cosponsors in the House of Representatives and 17 cosponsors in the Senate, leaving O4I members, like Lim, feeling more optimistic than in previous years that the law will pass. “I personally feel that we’re at a tipping point," Lim said. “With the marriage equality fight that we’ve been having across the nation, people are realizing that immigration benefits are part of it." “This situation is pretty common, especially because of today’s economy where people are losing jobs left and right," he said. “They have 10 days to find another job or they have to leave the country. If they find a new job they have 60 days to transfer their visa." But Tan, a house wife, said she didn’t even get a single day’s warning before ICE agents knocked on her door two months ago. “Before this thing happened, I was just a plain housewife minding my own business, living a normal life," she said. “I wasn’t hiding." Tan met Mercado in 1986 while visiting the U.S. from the Philippines. Three years later, after Tan obtained a visitor’s visa, the couple reunited in the U.S. to start a life together. Afraid to return to Philippines because of a violent family history, Tan hired an immigration attorney in 1995 and petitioned for political asylum. But when the court denied her asylum application in 2002, Tan said her attorney failed to update her. “Every time we followed up with my lawyer, she told us that I was okay and that it would just take a while because my case was in the 9th Circuit Court," Tan said, opting not to disclose the name of her former attorney. “So I knew it in my heart that my stay here was really okay." “She did everything that she was supposed to do," Tan’s new attorney Phyllis Beech said. “She relied on her attorney and her attorney didn’t follow up the way an attorney is supposed to." Lim agreed, saying, “There are a lot of immigrants that try to do the right thing and they find that, just because their attorney’s didn’t cross the ‘T’s and dot all their ‘I’s, they fall out of status and are placed in deportation proceedings." Melanie Nathan, a mediator working to publicize the Tan-Mercado case, said the couple received an outpouring of support from legislators like Rep. Speirer and the office of Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), and also from gay and lesbian rights groups like O4I, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), The Love Exiles Foundation, Immigration Equality and Marriage Equality USA. Within the Filipino community, the Bayan-USA & Gabriela-USA Queer Caucus also stepped forward in support of the couple. But even with these Filipino American groups and their own circle of Filipino family friends in their corner, the Tan-Mercados wonder if the greater Filipino community would rally arounad them. “I really don’t know how the culture in the Philippines now perceives couples like us, gay couples with families," Mercado said. “And that is a main concern of ours because if she goes home, we’re all going to go with her." “Because we’ve lived here for a long time, we don’t know the setting in the Philippines, if we’ll be welcome there," Tan added. For now, the Tan-Mercados focus on staying optimistic, hoping that their prayers for the Immigration Board of Appeals to grant a stay of Tan’s deportation and to reopen her asylum case, all before the April 22 deadline would be answered. But time is running out and they’re feeling desperate. “If changing my sex could be done right away for me, I would do it so that this problem would go away," Mercado said. “I’m willing to do anything at this point—anything if it will help Mommy."- Philippine News