Gay couples lobby for immigration benefits from US

Joseph Racicot and his partner, Roland, will celebrate their eighth anniversary as a couple on Tuesday.
They would love to have a quiet dinner in the ranch-style home they picked out in Houston, share a bottle of cabernet sauvignon and rehash the story of how they met.
Instead, they will spend their anniversary some 1,500 miles apart — Racicot in Saskatchewan, Canada, and Roland in their Houston home — linked only by cell phones and the belief that they belong together, despite the difficulty of maintaining a long-distance relationship complicated by immigration issues.
Under federal law, gay and lesbian U.S. citizens are not entitled to apply for legal status for their partners, even if their marriage is recognized by state law. That has left an estimated 36,000 binational, same-sex couples like Roland and Racicot with few options to legally build lives together in the U.S., according to Immigration Equality, a New York-based advocacy organization.
“The bottom line is that we wouldn’t be going through this if, as an American, I had the right to sponsor my partner,” said Roland, who asked that his last name be withheld for fear of repercussions at his workplace. See Gay couples lobby for immigration benefits from US
Houston Chronicle