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UAFA Hearings Move Forward With Moving Testimony

Testimony moved forward yesterday on the Uniting American Families Act, or UAFA. The bill is aimed at letting same-sex couples where one person is an American citizen and the other is from a foreign country stay united through the immigration process. Among those who have testified were Shirley Tan. Ms Tan has been facing deportation back to her native Philippines where her life is in mortal danger from her own family.

According to Oblogdeeoblogda:

“The futile testimony of the opposing GOP witnesses fell flat on its meritless belly, with its inability to acknowledge the desperate plight of Shirley and Gordon and their respective families. Senator Sessions sat stone faced through Shirley’s testimony and completely ignored her as if she was not there. Had I not been sitting in the front row, to witness this offensive parody I doubt I would have believed the the extent of the invalidation.

In a nutshell the GOP argument was:

1. There are to many immigrants – let us not provide for more;
2. If we give these people the right t petition for their permanent partners, we are ignoring DOMA, the ban on marriage, and in essence we are giving the gays marriage rights; and
3. If we allow gays to sponsor each other then we are opening the door to more fraud.

This fell so flat that one exile in the audience, my friend, Martha McDevitt –Pugh commented that the GOP testimony and comments of Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) were so futile that it “didn’t even bug me.”

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) was moved by the testimony of Shirley Tan. During the testimony, Ms Tan’s son Jashley broke into tears. Senator Leahy offered him a room to go to if he was going to be overly upset, but Jashley apparently refused wishing to remain by his mother’s side. While Senator Leahy was trying to be polite and to give the young man somewhere where he could be consoled by a member of the Senatorial staff until his mother’s testimony was over, Senator Jeff Sessions was far less cordial. “Enough with the histrionics,” he stated during the incident. Sessions is the only Republican to be at the hearings. Sessions is the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Leahy is the ranking Democrat and chair.

Also at the hearings were Gordon Stewart, who cannot return to this country to be with his partner until this bill is passed. Mr. Stewart is an executive with Pfizer. What follows are the two clips from both of their testimony. Top one is Ms. Tan, the bottom one is Mr. Stewart.

Our thanks go out to Oblogdeeoblogda, who is attending the hearings.

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