Pinay lesbian mom testifies in US Senate for pro-LGBT bill

The Senate judiciary committee heard Wednesday the testimony of Filipino lesbian mother, Shirley Tan, who flew thousands of miles to lend her voice for the proposed Uniting American Families Act (UAFA).
Immigration agents raided last January, the home that Tan shared with her longtime partner Jay Mercado and their 12-year-old twins in Pacifica, California.
Tan, 43, and Mercado, 48, have been living as a couple for 23 years (they are registered domestic partners who wed in 2004).
Although Mercado is an American citizen, she can not file a petition to grant Tan permanent resident status because US federal law only recognizes marriage between men and women.
“For too long, gay and lesbian American citizens whose partners are foreign national have been denied the ability to sponsor their loved ones for lawful permanent residency,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), chairman of the judiciary committee.
“The preservation of family unit is the core of our immigration legal system,” he stressed.
Leahy had invited Tan to testify before his panel.
Tan recounted how she first visited California in 1986 and found love in Mercado. “I met Jay when, as a graduation present, my father brought me to the United States. We met through our parents…and our love was instantaneous,” she told the panel.
Our family is fortunate. We have never felt discriminated against in our community. Our friends, mostly heterosexual couples, call as the ‘model family’,” Tan declared.
But she did fear going back to the Philippines because a cousin who shot her in the head and murdered her mother and sister in 1979 was released from prison. See Pinay lesbian mom testifies in US Senate for pro-LGBT bill
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