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V. “Screaming Into a Vacuum”: The Consequences for Couples’ Lives

Wendy and Belinda’s Story (Part Two)

Wendy, who has an advanced degree in Chinese medicine, is working and supporting herself and her British partner Belinda. “But this is where I start to establish the effect this has had on me,” she says.

We live with this so constantly that we lose track of how it affects us.  I am not willing to put my energy into building up a really great practice or starting up an office or establishing myself really well—because there’s this sense that right when it starts to take off, we’ll leave, and I will have invested all that time and energy and money into a life that I will just have to walk away from… The profound effect it has all had, on the choices I have made in my life…I’m a good doctor, and I am not using it to the fullest.  

Of course, there’s no guarantee of anything in life.  But here there’s something wrong—whether you go or stay is not your decision, is at the mercy of somebody else. …  I come to realize it has had a really undermining effect on how I live my life.

Some people say, Well, she has to leave, but you don’t have to.  I say: If your husband got kicked out of the country, wouldn’t you go with him? They don’t recognize that whatever commitment I have is as valid and strong as theirs. If she goes, I go: we’re in this together. 

Belinda reflects, “We own this house. It’s not a great house: we don’t have money to spend on anything.  We spend it on attorney’s fees.  Every piece of furniture has been given to us.  Why spend the money when it’s so impermanent?”

Wendy continues,

We haven’t had kids.  I’m thirty-seven, we’ve been together ten years; I always wanted a family. As a little girl, I wanted to adopt children—I cottoned onto the fact there were kids out there without parents, and someday I could give them a home…  And with all the ups and downs, the fact that every year or so we are faced with some new crisis about whether we can stay in the country—Belinda feels that to subject children to this craziness would be irresponsible.  I’m not even sure we could bring them with us if we move.  Some other countries, some other states in this country, won’t recognize us as parents—so can we actually bring them with us? And the added trauma of moving children.  Why should we uproot them?

I am amazed and surprised that we are still together.  We’ve watched a lot of couples split up because of the pressure and stress it puts on the relationship.  We would be in a radically different place if we didn’t have to go through this.

“All the money, the pressures, the inertia,” Belinda says, “not being able to get the job you want to get, not being able to move if you want to move, not being able to have children….”

How do we meet a crisis when it comes? Fight it, fight each other, or just go into a depressive funk? For the last three months since this hit, I have been in a depressive funk, and Wendy has been trying to help me out of it. One of us is always having to help the other through something.  And so few people understand it. 

Wendy elaborates:

The truth is there’s been a  lot of fighting, a lot of moments when our relationship has almost split—we were so new as a couple when we had to start dealing with this that I don’t think we had any established patterns for dealing with intense stress …The denial, the level of frustration, the fear, the anger—the whole big ball of it just grows and grows and it’s hard not to take it out on each other. And we definitely have had times when we did take it out on each other. 

Belinda concludes, “Someone said to me: a straight couple has a relationship, with all the stresses a relationship brings.  Then you’re a gay couple, with all the added stresses of being gay.  And put on top of that being a binational couple and having no legal rights…” Wendy finishes her sentence: “You haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell.”¹⁴¹

Financing Love

Invisibility is not easy.  The exclusion from immigration policy of lesbian, gay, and transgender foreign national partners of U.S. citizens and permanent residents affects every imaginable aspect of the couples’ lives.  This chapter explores the economic stresses of confronting an unjust immigration policy, and the anxiety and emotional hardship that isolation and indifference bring.

The monetary burden on binational lesbian and gay couples is severe.  Partners repeatedly turn their financial lives upside down.  They may go from getting by to struggling, from planning for their financial future to being unable to save—in some cases, from prosperity to poverty.  When forced to live apart, their relationships are sustained through expensive trips and phone calls. To be together, they may sacrifice jobs and careers.

Binational same-sex couples stand at an intersection of inequalities: the acute disadvantages most immigrants face, and the widespread discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.  The stresses they face are inseparable from the general economic pressures on these groups.

M.V. Lee Badgett’s research has countered the misconception that lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals have above average individual and household incomes.¹⁴²  Through empirical analysis of diverse, random and representative surveys, she found that:

• Lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals do not earn more than heterosexual people;¹⁴³
• Gay men earn less than comparable heterosexual men (17 – 28 percent less, depending on the study);
• Lesbians, gay men and bisexuals are represented throughout the economic spectrum. 

The economic disparities involving sexual orientation and gender identity become even more obvious when race and ethnicity are added to the calculation.  Black married opposite-sex households report an annual median income of $51,000—21 percent greater than black female same-sex households ($42,000).¹⁴⁴  Latino married opposite-sex households report an annual median household income of $44,420—11 percent greater than Latina same-sex households ($40,000).¹⁴⁵  Meanwhile, though there is no national data available on transgender people in the U.S., restricted studies indicate high unemployment, discrimination, and overall poverty.  For instance, nearly a third of transgender people surveyed in Washington D.C. reported incomes below $10,000 annually¹⁴⁶ and 53 percent of the transgender population in San Francisco earn less than $25,000 a year.¹⁴⁷ 

Meanwhile, immigrants are more likely to struggle financially than non-immigrants.¹⁴⁸  Though immigrants make up 11 percent of all U.S. residents, they constitute 14 percent of all workers and 20 percent of all low-wage workers.¹⁴⁹ The average low-wage immigrant worker earned $14,400 in 2001.¹⁵⁰ Thirty-one percent of foreign-born full time workers earn less than $20,000 a year, compared with 17 percent of U.S.-born full time workers.¹⁵¹  Seventeen percent of foreign-born workers were living below the poverty level in 2002, compared with 12 percent of U.S.-born workers.  Foreign-born, non-citizen full-time workers, however, are nearly twice as likely to be below the poverty line as U.S.-born citizen workers (21 percent and 12 percent respectively).¹⁵²  Concerns about confidentiality may lead foreign born non-citizens not to report themselves, or to identify as naturalized citizens on their census form, which means that the statistical differences between U.S.-born and foreign-born full-time workers could be still greater. 

The pummeling of couples’ capacity to get by is steady.  Debt is a constant threat. David, forty-two, spent a year living apart from his British partner, Howie, thirty-seven.  In that time, they flew back and forth “about ten or eleven times to see each other,” David recalls. “We spent maybe $10,000 on travel. It completely drained our finances.  Each trip was at least $400-$600 in airfare.  It was not something I could afford.  But, even though I should have, I didn’t really give it a second thought.  I put it on credit cards—and I’m only now coming out of debt.”¹⁵³

David and Howie at David’s mother’s home in 2005. © 2006 Private

When Amy, a forty-two year old U.S. citizen, received an artist’s residency in England three years ago, she fell in love with Jerry, thirty-five.  To sustain their relationship when the residency ended, Amy took time off from her photography business for a second sojourn in England.  When it ended, the couple clung to an intercontinental connection through phone calls and frequent trips, until Jerry managed to move to the U.S. on a two-year student visa.  “It’s expensive to go back and forth,” Amy notes. “My career took a big hit when I was away.  Jerry has no extra money because she’s spending everything on school.  I spend all of my money on credit card debt to pay off plane tickets.”  At one point, Jerry had to return to England indefinitely to renew her visa.  “I couldn’t get a roommate because we weren’t sure when she was coming back,” Amy says.  “So, for three or four months, my bills doubled.  I’m just coming back from that.”

Amy, who earns $30,000 a year, is carrying $25,000 dollars of debt on her credit card as a result of their immigration trials.

My goal is for us to not go any deeper into debt, which will probably mean we have to go to England.  I don’t think Jerry has gone into debt over school, though she can’t save…I took about a $6,000 or $8,000 annual income decline. The last couple of years have just been dreadful financially. ¹⁵⁴

Many couples are compelled to stop saving money, deplete their personal accounts, or withdraw retirement funds.  Robert, a forty-nine-year-old American, is currently living with his partner, Fabian, a forty-year-old Argentinean, in Buenos Aires.¹⁵⁵ Robert was at the top of his pay scale before he went into exile; yet he has been unable to find comparable work in Buenos Aires.  He now teaches English for a living, earning five dollars an hour.  “I can’t save in this situation,” he explains, “and in fact, I’m still using savings.  I’m trying not to go through the remaining savings that I have.  I have to be very careful, but it’s happening, little by little.”  Out of necessity, the couple rents rooms in their apartment to boarders for additional income.¹⁵⁶

Nearly every person Human Rights Watch and Immigration Equality interviewed spoke of the profound impact that being in a binational same-sex couple has had on their careers.  Partners who relocated, either to or from the U.S., described the difficulty of starting anew.  Others told of being too preoccupied by anxiety to work at their full potential.  Many recounted being forced into miserable jobs.  Young people, compelled by visa juggling to start and stop jobs repeatedly, were left with resumes that misleadingly suggest unreliability.  Others had to take second jobs to cover the costs of travel, phone, and legal fees.  In all cases, the legal onslaught on a personal life warped professional choices.

Thomas has been living in the U.S. apart from his partner, Francois, a chemical engineer with a Ph.D., for the past two and a half years.  He told us:

It’s impacted Francois’ career in that he is hesitant to become deeply committed to his job because of immigration problems.  It’s kept him from climbing the ladder where he works. I think he also performs less than his potential because he is depressed as well.  Two and a half years is a very long time.¹⁵⁷

Wade Nichols, American, was living with his partner, Francis Shen, Taiwanese, in Taipei when he was accepted into a year-long graduate program in the U.S.  Francis could have accompanied Wade to the U.S. legally—but would have needed to work illegally to keep their household going.  Wade explains, “We talked about it, but there was the question of income.  Francis said ‘I could get an illegal job working in a Chinese restaurant,’ and I just thought, here is a thirty-eight-year-old man with a master’s degree, and to be with me, he would have to do so illegally?  So he didn’t go.” ¹⁵⁸

On the other side, Kelly Bossi-Andresen, an American woman, described the tremendous difficulties of going into exile, even with the benefits of legal status and higher education.  In Denmark, with a menial job at her partner’s workplace,

I do the cleaning, set up meetings, and make lunches.  I do the traditional woman’s job.  It’s not my preferred role.  I put myself through university. I paid for that myself.  I worked hard so that I can have a good life for myself and my children.  To be doing this doesn’t feel right to me.  I’m not using all the parts of myself.

When I tried to find a job, the response was, “Oh, no, your education is from the United States.  We do things differently here.”  If you want to be a teacher, you have to study here for four years …  I’m not given the same opportunities as a Dane would—because I’m a foreigner.¹⁵⁹

Enrolling in school and qualifying for student visas is often the only way that foreign nationals in binational same-sex partnerships can legally stay in the U.S.; thus, education costs loom large for them.  The partner cannot earn a full salary on a student visa.  Yet international students often pay far more tuition than Americans students, are ineligible for federal and state financial aid, must maintain minimum savings equal to a year or more’s tuition, and are stringently restricted in the hours of work-study they are allowed in a given week. 

Suzanne, an Australian citizen, was a trained web developer but had to study computer science in the U.S. to be able to stay with her partner, Leslie.  To remain legal, she said,

I applied from Australia as an F1 visa student, and have to pay exorbitant course fees as well as have no legal capacity to work and offset the cost of studying here which is upwards of $30,000 US—I had to sell real estate in Australia in order to afford this; however, this was the only way I could legally join my partner in the U.S… We have been forced to put ourselves into financial hardship in order to be together in the United States legally. We constantly have to be aware of every single expense we have.¹⁶⁰

Simon, originally from the Philippines, was similarly on a student visa, staying to be with his partner Joe in Kentucky.  Joe, he told us, is “the sole breadwinner of our family.  Immigration laws are very oppressive.  He has to work more than eighty hours a week, including odd jobs, just to be able to pay for my tuition fees and our living expenses.”¹⁶¹

Other couples reiterate the insuperable difficulty of supporting a household on a single income.  Betsy, a thirty-year old British woman, remains in the U.S. out of status so that she can be with Lorraine, her partner of eight years, and their two children.  Because she cannot legally work, Betsy earns what she can by making and selling homemade soap at craft fairs and doing seasonal work in a friend’s office.  She primarily stays at home raising their children, and they survive on whatever Lorraine brings home.  Lorraine’s annual salary was $21,000 when they met, which had to cover not only herself and Betsy but their children’s expenses.  For the past two years, however, Lorraine has been back in school— which means the family survives almost exclusively on her student financial aid.  Lorraine says, “I don’t look at the total of the student loans; if I did, I’d drop out.”¹⁶²

For lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people who need public benefits such as unemployment insurance, Social Security Disability Insurance, welfare, or subsidized housing, falling in love with someone from another country can make life even more complicated.  Such assistance programs make no allowances for the expenses same-sex couples (or other unmarried couples) may face.  Moreover, public assistance comes laden with restrictions. 

Barbara, forty-three, a U.S. citizen living in Massachusetts, is legally disabled with severe difficulty walking.  She has a disabled son, seventeen, as well as a thirteen-year-old daughter.  She relives heavily for physical help as well as emotional support on her British partner, Susan, who lives with her in the U.S.  Barbara qualifies for subsidized housing because of her multiple disabilities.  Susan is legally in the U.S. on a student visa.  Yet, foreigners on student visas cannot live in subsidized housing, so Susan’s presence in the house must be a secret, even though she is both Susan’s primary caregiver and her partner. Barbara feels the injustice acutely: “I have neighbors who have a partner who is not American, and they can bring their spouses, and I say, accept all; but I’m an American and I can’t get my own home country to accept my own partner.” ¹⁶³

Barbara and Susan in 2002 at Easter dinner. © 2006 Private

Friends and Family

Again and again couples spoke of intense isolation.   Navigating the immigration system can be agonizing; inconsistency and insecurity become constant.  What a person in a binational relationship can give as a friend or family member, and what they need in return, may shift significantly.  Barbara says,

I have friends that are supportive, but a lot of them just haven’t understood.  Initially they asked, “Why do you bother?”  In the course of trying to explain this, a lot of friends have fallen by the wayside.  This becomes the center of your life; you’re not the fun friend anymore…Yeah, I’d say that probably most of my friends don’t call anymore.¹⁶⁴ 

People turn inward, Amy explains. “There’s a sense of helplessness.  You’ve got this black hole.  You start talking about your life and then this major roadblock comes up.”¹⁶⁵ 

Forming new friendships can prove more difficult.  Betsy told us how being undocumented meant shrinking into a deliberate, but debilitating, inconspicuousness.  “I don’t like to lie to people, but you do it because you have to stop the questions.  When you’re making friends, you don’t know who you can trust: at what point do you come clean to people?  And then, is the friendship real when you’ve started the friendship on a lie?” ¹⁶⁶

Likewise, partners in exile, often struggling with culture and language, can be cemented in loneliness.   Wade Nichols is a “social person,” he says, but in Taiwan “I have huge difficulties making friends.  I have to find people who speak English, and then people who I actually like.  It’s hard to build a long-term friendship here.  It is frustrating for me.  I often have nothing else to do but come home and watch TV.” ¹⁶⁷

Kelly Bossi-Andresen, resettled in Denmark to build her family, echoed the sense of solitude:

Coming from a place like San Francisco to a rural farm area in southern Denmark, there’s not a lot of diversity—not a lot of gay men and women here. For me that was hard.  When Gitte and I had decided to have our children, and build our family, we knew that gay and lesbian culture was important to us, something we wanted to pass on to them.  We wanted them to be proud of who we were, as we were, and here we are—we are the pioneers.  We are the lesbians in this community.  My midwife in my pregnancy—she’s a lesbian, and Gitte and I have helped her and her partner build a life here.  But there’s no community around us.¹⁶⁸

Marta Donayre, a Brazilian national in the Bay Area, says that she and her partner Leslie Bulbuk find indifference not only from friends, but from the populations with which they identify, within which they work.  “To the immigrant community, we’re the gays; to the gay community, we’re immigrants; and in the end, we’re invisible. … I would like to stop being a wedge issue and be able to say that I’m fully a member of two communities.”¹⁶⁹

Couples spoke, too, of how uncertainty pervaded their lives.  The impact ranges from the relatively banal, such as whether to replace a weathered couch, to the fundamental: whether to commit to a lease, have a child, keep a job, plan for retirement.  Questions erode people’s sense not just of where they are going, but of who they are.  Thomas told us: “It makes thinking about the distant future impossible.  It makes thinking about the near future next to impossible.”¹⁷⁰

Ashwini, twenty-three and from India, was studying in Texas where she had met her U.S. partner Rachel, twenty-eight.   “My student visa will officially expire” in a year, she worried. 

There is an acute sense of uncertainty in our relationship.  This uncertainty does not stem from problems inherent to human relationships, but from the laws of the land. … We are unable to make any concrete plans for our future together since everything will fall apart if I’m unable to live in this country.¹⁷¹

Will, trying to live legally in the U.S. with his partner Stefano, told us, “We always feel a sense of fear; as though someone is going to come along and say, ‘You have to leave this evening.’  It may not be realistic, but it’s there – it keeps you awake at night.”¹⁷² 

This atmosphere, oscillating between tentativeness and terror, does not just affect personal relationships.  The Department of Motor Vehicles; the police; the bank—with no legal recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender relationships, many couples fear that authorities such as these could frustrate their lives, or, at worst, undo them. They spoke of their need always to be protective and prepared.  As Lorraine points out, “Just something as routine as a traffic stop could end our life as we know it now.”  Betsy, her undocumented partner, only has a British driver’s license, but she drives in the U.S. as well.  Getting behind the wheel is risky, but sometimes necessary.  Betsy explains, 

If I don’t drive, I would rely on Lorraine so much and be stuck in the house all the time.  We’d also have to pay for someone to drive the kids back and forth to school.  On vacation [in the U.S.], using a British license is technically legal.  If a cop stopped me, I would have to make up a story that I was on vacation here and say that I was just borrowing a friend’s car. 

But if the officer chose to investigate more deeply, she says, “You’re in hot water straight away.”¹⁷³

One particularly humiliating fact for many couples trying to stay in the U.S. is that they dare not publicly celebrate their union, even in jurisdictions where the law allows it—because it might adversely affect the foreign partner’s status.  Rebecca and Eileen, American and British respectively, had been juggling visas for five years to remain together in Vermont.  “We have spoken about having a civil union,” Rebecca wrote, but

from published information we realize that doing it would be detrimental to any attempt Eileen makes toward acquiring another visa.  We fear that any action that would legally commit us would essentially put a red flag on her name—and getting temporary visas would become even more difficult.¹⁷⁴

Miriam Alejandrina Morales Marin, a Uruguayan citizen, had been living undocumented in the U.S. for many years—and had become an activist for undocumented workers’ rights. She met her partner, Hana Tauber, in 2002.  On May 23, 2004, in Boston, Massachusetts, they married—only weeks after equality in civil marriage had become the law there.  A week later, they left for Ecuador, because they knew their possibilities of being able to live together legally in the United States were slim, and their marriage only exposed Miriam’s status to greater threat.  “We are going through the opposite of the relationship of man and woman,” Miriam says.  “If I would have married a man, I would have stayed in the U.S. and gotten my papers.  Only I married a woman, and that put me in more danger than I was in before.”¹⁷⁵

However, the ultimate victims of constant uncertainty and constrained choices are families—the multiple families that people try to sustain, belong to, and accommodate, while struggling against the indifference of immigration law.  This is particularly true for couples raising children. 

Children in these relationships both have a profound impact on their families and are profoundly impacted.  Caring for a child in a partnership without legal recognition redoubles anxieties and intensifies strains.  Abigail, a U.K. citizen and thirty-two, and her U.S. partner Lynne, thirty-four, had been living for six years in Tennessee when Abigail wrote us.  Juggling visitor’s visas, Abigail feared she would eventually be denied or deported: “If I am sent back, it will not only affect Lisa and I, but her children also. We are a loving family, and provide a secure and loving atmosphere for our children. I don’t know how the kids would react if I had to suddenly leave!”¹⁷⁶

Barbara, in Massachusetts, worried about how the uncertainty of her partner Susan’s status affected her children’s’ well-being.  Barbara’s seventeen-year old son has a severe mental illness:

It’s already been five and a half years of this.  At times, we think that if we’re going to have to emigrate, it’s almost better to get it over with.  And yet: my son would be eighteen by then, but [because of his disability] he wouldn’t be able to go, so I would have to choose between my partner, my country and my son.  Obviously, I couldn’t leave my son; he would need to be in a residential situation.  I don’t want to do that.  It’s so frustrating. 

Occasionally, the [kids will] hear these conversations.  My daughter doesn’t want to have to move, and she gets very upset, very unsure of her future, and that’s not good for kids.  There’s been random nights of lots of tears.  My daughter worries Susan will go away and not come back.  You can’t tell kids that it will all be okay.  “Okay” to her would mean we will stay here with her friends, that everything will stay the same.  And we can’t tell her that, because everything might not be okay. 

We just want to be able to have a normal life as a family, just get past this and do what normal people do, just have the freedom to be like everyone else, and not have the government so bigoted against our rights to not have that.  We’d rather spend our energy helping the kids with their homework, seeing a movie, worrying about normal financial issues, not these overwhelming questions. 

Barbara, Susan and children celebrate their first Christmas together in 2000.
From left to right: Barbara’s son, Shayne; Susan; Barbara; and Barbara’s daughter, Jami.
© 2006 Private

Barbara underscores another tension that her family must struggle with: foreign nationals in lesbian or gay relationships often have no legal recognition that they parent their American partner’s children.  “It kills me that [Susan] has no legal rights to the kids.  The family would be destroyed if something happened to me.  She has no rights, and she can’t get rights to our family because she’s not an American.  She wouldn’t even have the right to take them out of the country if she couldn’t stay here.”¹⁷⁷ 

“I think very few people can understand the dilemma of having to choose between your family and the person that you love,” Thomas told us, in one of the refrains most frequently echoed by the couples interviewed for this report.¹⁷⁸  Partners—American or foreign—who had gone into exile described the pain of missing family crises and family celebrations.  It is not necessarily a love of place but often a love of family that keeps lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans struggling against great odds to stay in the U.S. with their partners.  Conversely, many foreign nationals complained of being unable to travel—because undocumented, or because awaiting a visa’s approval—which can mean going for years without seeing parents or siblings. 

“Immigration laws don’t just affect the individuals involved in a relationship,” Ashwini said:

Rachel’s parents are in their sixties and seventies.  She wants them to live with us and we want to take care of them.  But how is that going to be possible if we aren’t going to be in this country?  If we leave this place, then her parents come along with us.  Why should our families be put in a situation where they are compelled to leave their home of forty-five years?¹⁷⁹

Todd and Nick had been partners for five years, but mostly living apart, when they wrote us; Todd is a U.S. citizen, Nick is Greek, and they were moving to London to make a common life.   “My friends will miss me,” Todd reflected, “but most of all my parents, both in their seventies, will be saddened.  My mother strongly wishes that I would stay in the U.S. in order to be near them as they grow older but this would require me to abandon my partner, my adult family.  I am forced by U.S. immigration law to move far away from my parents and live in another country as they grow old and need me to be near.¹⁸⁰

There are significant sadnesses around not being with parents as they age, for something as minor as home maintenance or something as major as around-the-clock care.  Connie, living in Canada with her Turkish partner Ayla, worried that, back in the U.S., “My mom’s mentally really going down.  I call her every week …She’s always asking me ‘When am I going to see you? When am I going to see you?’  She needs twenty-four hour a day care.  I try to explain, but I don’t think she understands. … I just worry. I think, one week I’m going to call and she’s going to have forgotten about me.”¹⁸¹

Wendy and Belinda, faced with leaving the U.S., reflected on the losses this would entail:  “It’s not just us, a couple. It’s about a community.” ¹⁸² Tony, thirty-eight, a social worker in New York, considered the same interconnectedness as he contemplated exile with his Brazilian partner. 

Mass media and popular culture tend to think of gay men and lesbians in a vacuum.  But we are so large a part of the fabric of society.  We are sons, daughters, brothers, sisters.  We are also tuition-paying students, tax-paying social workers, working with people with AIDS, helping people with addictions.  I think you would have to ask my mother, my brother, my accountant, my clients, my colleagues, my landlord, my neighbors, my friends, my writing partner, my students, how they would be affected if I left this country.¹⁸³

Health

In a situation of unhealthy strain, most partners in these couples are under great pressure—to stay healthy.  Lesbian and gay foreign nationals usually do not qualify for their partner’s health insurance.  They either go uninsured or must find a way to afford private insurance.¹⁸⁴  They may forgo medical care for both routine and serious health issues—and the vicissitudes of immigration decisions cause American partners to face this dilemma as well. Wade Nichols, living in exile with his partner in Taiwan, needs knee surgery.  He is reluctant to have it performed in Taiwan where, not speaking Chinese, he would be unable to communicate with medical personnel (nor is he sure his partner would be allowed to be present to help). Yet, Wade no longer has U.S. health insurance, so he cannot afford the operation at home. ¹⁸⁵ 

With the HIV ban in effect for immigrants, foreign nationals trying to stay in the U.S. constantly experience an extra edge of worry about the consequences of contracting HIV/AIDS or other communicable diseases.  The same applies for many Americans in exile: as Wade explained about his journey through the Taiwanese immigration system, “You have to be in good health.  I have to make sure that I don’t contract any disease that would prevent me from getting residency.” ¹⁸⁶   

If one partner has a serious health concern, separation for a period as brief as a visa renewal or as long as the resolution of a major immigration issue can be a huge burden.  Barbara, legally disabled, tells of the reverberations of Susan’s absence when she had to return to England to renew her student visa.

As far as daily living, I need her to lift things, to get down to the laundry room, things like that.  When she was away, my daughter, who was nine years old, had to do things like carry the laundry downstairs, because I couldn’t do it – she weighed just fifty pounds herself!  It’s not like you want your kids to have to deal with that.  I couldn’t get groceries.  We had to stock up on everything before she left.  It was a lot to ask my daughter to have to do these things. 

I walk with a cane, but there are days when I literally can’t walk.  I live on the second floor, so I can’t always get out.  It would be really, really difficult to function without Susan.  Even to lose her to change her visa is a huge hardship.¹⁸⁷ 

Being apart, or being financially burdened by their immigration hardships, often means that couples cannot support each other in health emergencies.  Before they went into exile in Spain, Anji lived in San Diego and Hills lived in London. “When Hills was diagnosed with malignant melanoma, she sat in a doctor’s office alone.  The diagnosis came before I could get on a plane over there.”¹⁸⁸  

The fact or even the fear of separation from loved ones can erode or devastate a partner’s health.  Anxiety, depression, fear, insomnia, exhaustion, eating disorders, and even suicidal thoughts are only some ways that the experience of injustice infiltrates the most personal realms of peoples’ lives: their bodies and minds.

Felipe is a Colombian geology professor who teaches at a community college in Texas.  After twelve years of visa juggling, he recently became a permanent resident, but remembers a decade during which “My self-esteem was underground.  Many times during my lunch break, I would just drive my car to a parking lot for half an hour and cry.”¹⁸⁹  Ben, a San Franciscan whose German partner Kurt had to leave the country when his visa ran out, told us:

I’ve had to be treated for depression since then. …  It’s been a tremendous amount of storm and stress about the condition of our family.  We are in our eighth year together, and have a family unit just like any other couple.  It’s distressing to come home at night and find your lover not there.  It’s painful to come home and have no partner in the house, just emptiness.¹⁹⁰

Such apparently endless pressure leads some to an ominous brink.  After long separation from his partner of eight years with little hope of living together in the U.S., Thomas found himself “suddenly having these thoughts that I’ve not had before.” 

This sort of situation makes people ask themselves fundamental questions that the average person doesn’t have to ask themselves… Others don’t understand your struggle, or they can’t do anything about it.  You’re left screaming into a vacuum and asking what point your individual existence has.  If you’re looking for answers, you won’t get one.¹⁹¹

Mental and physical problems can lead to increased alcohol and drug use and dependencies.  Partners told us of drinking as a “coping mechanism.”¹⁹² Kelly McGowan sees her present striving as part of a story that began with the difficulties of growing up lesbian in “an Irish-American family in a predominantly Catholic city in the 60’s and 70’s”:

Needless to say, I have had to work very hard since then, with lots of therapy and peer support, to create a life that is free from the emotional pain that is caused by being disenfranchised from both my family and community. Self-help has also enabled me to avoid using drugs and alcohol— a way of coping that has caused harm to too many queers—as the only way to deal with these kinds of emotions. But until the U.S. recognizes my rights to live here with my life partner, she and I will have to deal with the day-to-day struggles and related stress that comes from being an outsider. A day doesn't go by when I don't wonder what more productive things I and the rest of this country could be accomplishing if we weren't organized around these kind of battles.¹⁹³

Indeed, some relationships cannot survive the blows.  Madison, in Kentucky, wrote of her former lover from Australia:

She and I are no longer intimate partners. The relationship lasted almost three years and we gave up after that because we couldn’t find a way to be together due to lack of money and more importantly the lack of a visa.  We were only able to spend about four and a half months of that time physically together: and that was enough for us both to realize that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together and someday get married.

“How could there be a rule that says two people can’t love another?” Madison demands. “What difference does it make if they’re the same gender?”  And she adds, “Let’s be realistic—I’m gay—no one knows I exist.” ¹⁹⁴

Yet from all these stories, two threads emerged.  First, whether as individuals or couples, against the odds, people defended the lives they had defined for themselves against the state’s indifference.  Kurt, looking back on his battle to stay with his partner Ben, says, “One thing I’ve learned about myself: it is possible to find the courage to fight back and to establish the life you want to live.” ¹⁹⁵ Second, couples insisted again and again on seeing the political as well as personal dimensions of their ordeals.  One man wrote us:

I sacrificed two years serving my country in the Peace Corps, promoting American values such as the freedom to pursue happiness. I now realize that these values do not apply to me and that I am in essence a second-class citizen… Do our elected officials enjoy tearing couples apart?  Do they enjoy seeing a group of their fellow Americans suffer?¹⁹⁶

Tom, in Texas, carrying on a long-distance relationship with his Vietnamese partner, Phong, said:

I think about my father who fought many wars so that citizens of this country could remain free to choose.  Now this very same country my father put his life on the line for denies me the right to choose… I do not want to leave my country but my country has already left me.  I think this is a very sad day for the United States of America.  For a country to turn its back on its citizens is a disgrace.¹⁹⁷