–On June 29, the California state senate voted to approve the state’s resolution in support of the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA). The state assembly followed with a concurrence vote on July 1, making

California the first state in our nation to support the passage of UAFA and its inclusion in any Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

We will be following up on this historic vote by faxing a copy of the resolution to our CA representatives urging them to step up and support equal immigration rights for same-sex binational couples!

Thanks goes to Assemblyman Kevin De Leon, Ms Lisa Chen of Assemblyman De Leon’s office and Mario Guerrero from Equality California (EQCA) for helping shepherd the resolution through both chambers of the California Legislature. Compelling testimony from O4I members Gina Caprio, Melanie Nathan, Shirley Tan and Amos Lim was instrumental in educating the state legislators about the seriousness of our issue.

Pride Events Organized by Out4Immigration’s Members in June
Last month, Out4Immigration members organized informational booth spaces in Hartford CT, Denver CO, Sarasota FL, Wilton Manors FL Sacramento CA & San Francisco, CA. Many thanks to our members Pete, Sandy, Debbie, Karin, Tom, Enda, Ken, Shannon, Gina, Katie, Inger, Mark, Nikki and our friends and supporters for making O4I’s presence in the various Pride Events a big success! More than 35 people marched with us in San Francisco – one of our best turnouts ever. Extra special thanks to Chris, Reinhold and Erik for organizing SF Pride this year, repairing our signs (and making some new ones) and rounding up volunteers. Well done!

You can view some of the pictures taken at the various events on our Facebook page.

Get Active in Your Community

–Out4Immigration encourages our members and supporters to get active in your community by talking with other LGBT and immigrant rights’ groups. We have a lot of materials that you can download for free and distribute in your community.We will also be putting together a Grassroots Groundswell Kit in a couple of weeks!  Keep a lookout for the kit and learn how you could use it to educate your local representative about this issue and get them to support equal immigration rights for same-sex binational couples!

IN THE NEWS

Gay U.S. citizens seek to claim residency for foreign spouses

–The Miami Dade Herald covered the story of Juan Carlos Galán and Greg Nardi, a same-sex binational couple from Miami and their immigration struggles. You can read the entire article here.

UPCOMING EVENTS AND CALLS TO ACTION
–Weekly Letter Writing Campaign and Call Congress. Every week we write to members of Congress and ask them to support UAFA and its inclusion in CIR. We have been sending our letters for over a year now, and this has led to more than 20 additional co-sponsors in the House and 5 in the Senate! Great work by everyone, but we have more to do. Visit Change.org each Monday for the new letter to send and check out our blog each Wednesday for a list of phone calls to make. Remember, our letters and calls really do make a difference.

GET INCLUDED IN OUR NEXT ACTION AND MEDIA UPDATE
Do you have an event or news item we should include in our next LGBT immigration news update mailing? Send it to Kathy at kathy@out4immigration.org.

THANKS TO ALL OUR VOLUNTEERS!
Out4Immigration is an all-volunteer, grassroots group. Everything we do comes from people volunteering their personal time – to build coalitions with their communities, to get resolutions and letters in support of UAFA, to speak at conferences and rallies, to staff booths at events, to organize events and march in parades. Thank you all for stepping up. It is your commitment to this cause that will ultimately end discrimination in US immigration law.

JOIN US!
Join Out4Immigration on the web through our Yahoo! Groups list (visit our website homepage and scroll to the bottom of the page, click on the Yahoo! icon and follow the instructions) and keep up with our daily conversation on equal immigration rights. You can also join us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.