Sex and the Citizen
May. 30th, 2005 06:32 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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transSex and the Citizen
The US immigration agency doesn't recognize marriages involving transgender people--so Donita Ganzon is taking it to court.
Lisa Katayama
May 25 , 2005
Last June, Donita Ganzon and Jiffy Javellana showed up at the Los Angeles district office of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services for what they thought would be a routine interview. Though she was born in the Philippines, Ganzon, a 58-year-old nurse, is a US citizen. Javellana, her husband of three years, is a 28-year-old Filipino immigrant. Having lived happily with his wife in the US for several years, Javellana expected to come away from the interview with a green card in place of his temporary work visa.
Instead, his application for permanent residency was denied, and he now faces deportation.
What happened? As Ganzon tells it, during the interview she casually mentioned to an immigration officer that she'd had a sex change operation years before. To look at her today, that’s hard to believe: Ganzon is an elegant and very feminine woman with a slender figure, large brown eyes and a smooth complexion. “You look at me now, my soul, my heart—I am a woman,” she says. Her husband agrees. “It didn’t matter to me [that Donita had a sex change,]” he says. What's more, her driver’s license, marriage certificate, and passport all have her down as a woman. And yet, it’s true: Donita Ganzon was born male, and and it wasn't until 1981, at age 34, seven years after first coming to the United States, that she decided to undergo surgery to become a woman.
And that, at least by the Bush administration’s lights, is a problem. Citing the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which defines marriage as being strictly between a man and a woman, the CIS––formerly the INS, and now operating under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security—argues that Ganzon’s and Javellana’s is a gay marriage—and hence, under federal law, no marriage at all. Therefore, CIS argues, he’s ineligible for a green card. (The noncitizen spouse of a US citizen can receive a green card—which allows him or her to work indefinitely in the United States—after a few years of living together in the US, if the immigration authorities accept that the marriage is in good faith.)
Ganzon’s lawyers are filing a discrimination suit in district court arguing that, because the couple’s union is on all defined legal terms a heterosexual marriage--Ganzon being a woman, Javellana a man-- Javellana is fully entitled to a green card under US law.
Read the remainder at http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2005/05/donita_ganzon.html
[Edit: According to Interim Decision #3512 posted at http://www.usdoj.gov/eoir/vll/intdec/vol23/3512%20.pdf, a decision was issed May 18, 2005 in favor of the petitioner. Thank you,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
valentinagrrl for the reference to www.vdare.com, which had the link to the decision.]
xpost to my LJ
The US immigration agency doesn't recognize marriages involving transgender people--so Donita Ganzon is taking it to court.
Lisa Katayama
May 25 , 2005
Last June, Donita Ganzon and Jiffy Javellana showed up at the Los Angeles district office of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services for what they thought would be a routine interview. Though she was born in the Philippines, Ganzon, a 58-year-old nurse, is a US citizen. Javellana, her husband of three years, is a 28-year-old Filipino immigrant. Having lived happily with his wife in the US for several years, Javellana expected to come away from the interview with a green card in place of his temporary work visa.
Instead, his application for permanent residency was denied, and he now faces deportation.
What happened? As Ganzon tells it, during the interview she casually mentioned to an immigration officer that she'd had a sex change operation years before. To look at her today, that’s hard to believe: Ganzon is an elegant and very feminine woman with a slender figure, large brown eyes and a smooth complexion. “You look at me now, my soul, my heart—I am a woman,” she says. Her husband agrees. “It didn’t matter to me [that Donita had a sex change,]” he says. What's more, her driver’s license, marriage certificate, and passport all have her down as a woman. And yet, it’s true: Donita Ganzon was born male, and and it wasn't until 1981, at age 34, seven years after first coming to the United States, that she decided to undergo surgery to become a woman.
And that, at least by the Bush administration’s lights, is a problem. Citing the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which defines marriage as being strictly between a man and a woman, the CIS––formerly the INS, and now operating under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security—argues that Ganzon’s and Javellana’s is a gay marriage—and hence, under federal law, no marriage at all. Therefore, CIS argues, he’s ineligible for a green card. (The noncitizen spouse of a US citizen can receive a green card—which allows him or her to work indefinitely in the United States—after a few years of living together in the US, if the immigration authorities accept that the marriage is in good faith.)
Ganzon’s lawyers are filing a discrimination suit in district court arguing that, because the couple’s union is on all defined legal terms a heterosexual marriage--Ganzon being a woman, Javellana a man-- Javellana is fully entitled to a green card under US law.
Read the remainder at http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2005/05/donita_ganzon.html
[Edit: According to Interim Decision #3512 posted at http://www.usdoj.gov/eoir/vll/intdec/vol23/3512%20.pdf, a decision was issed May 18, 2005 in favor of the petitioner. Thank you,
valentinagrrl for the reference to www.vdare.com, which had the link to the decision.]xpost to my LJ
