A congressional briefing held Friday to discuss immigration reform included five witnesses, one of whom was a gay man testifying about the struggles faced by binational LGBT couples.
Steve Orner of Washington, D.C., said goodbye on Wednesday to his partner of nearly 10 years, “Joe Smith” -- who asked that we not use his real name -- when Smith left to return to his native Indonesia.
“I'm scared to go back,” Smith said by phone on the day of his departure. “This is my home; I have been living here for half of my life.”
Smith came to the United States 18 years ago to pursue his education. Federal scholarships funded his studies entirely as he earned bachelor's and master’s degrees from the University of Kentucky and a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh, where he met Orner. “I met Steve and I fell in love. I didn’t choose to fall in love,” he said. “I didn’t plan to stay in this country at the time.”
But now Smith is returning to the closet -- to a country where being gay is criminal in some provinces, and to a family who doesn’t know he is gay or that he was forced to leave behind his love in America. “I will survive there, but it's hard because I have a family here -- my partner, the person that is most important in my life, is here,” he said.
Smith was well on his way to receiving his green card, having been approved for one after he was sponsored by a D.C. firm that hired him as a structural engineer.
“Once he got approved, even our immigration attorneys said, ‘Congratulations, it's only a matter of time,’” recalled Orner. But Smith was laid off in April, before his work visa came through. “It was just a huge blow,” said Orner, noting that they had already bought a house together.
The sting has been particularly acute because Smith is well qualified to help rebuild the crumbling infrastructure that major federal stimulus funds are now targeted toward repairing -- but the stimulus package stipulates that almost all the jobs it creates must be filled by U.S. citizens.
“He’s educated with American money, he's a scientist, a Ph.D., and there’s a brain drain in this country -- it's a stupid policy,” said Orner.
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