Ah, French. We don’t have kids, but if we did we’d be fine with their education in French. Mr. Mallard’s sibling’s kids are English-at-home and Welsh-at-school, so there’s precedent. His own French is… not great, but not the worst in the world. He could probably at least pass a reading test. But perhaps it would be more sensisble to aim at one of the other 9 provinces until the residency hurdle is cleared.
I’m straight, but I do have some experience with marriage and immigration, as I once helped my ex-fiance get her visa to come here from Brazil.
www.visajourney.com was the site where I got most of my help from. They have great message boards too.
I always did wonder how the Federal government dealt with gay marriage, especially as it’s legal in some places but not others. I even searched around the visajourney.com site to see if the federal government recognizes gay marriage or not, but I could never find an answer.
It’s also not clear from your post, are you and Mr. Mallard willing to get married, or not?
If you intend to marry, you might look into Massachusetts. Gay marriage is legal here, and you mentioned something about Montreal----we’re only a 5-6 hour drive from there.
Important note: If someone comes to the U.S. with a visa (tourist, student, work) with the intention of getting married, that constitutes visa fraud and can generate problems. I won’t advise you to lie…but it is important that Mr. Mallard truly came to the U.S. simply to work, and only became interested in marrying you later, during his stay here.
Also, if you do get married in the U.S., the legal term for what Mr. Mallard wants to do is “adjustment of status.”
Here’s a link to the uscis.gov site where a married person would download and complete Form I-485.
Upon looking around a little more, I’ve found some unfortunate news:
Scroll down to the part where it says “Gay Marriages.”
Partial quote from USCIS site:
For the purposes of immigration, a marriage’s validity is a question of Federal law, not of State law. In 1996, Congress clarified the Federal law concerning recognition of marriage by enacting the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Pub. L. No. 104-199, 110 Stat. 2419 (1996). The DOMA contains a statutory definition of “marriage,” and of the related term, “spouse.” Pursuant to the DOMA, in order for a relationship to qualify as a marriage for purposes of Federal law, one partner must be a man, and the other must be a woman.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that does come directly from the USCIS’s website. It would appear that a gay marriage won’t be recognized, and any attempt by Mr. Mallard to remain legally in the U.S. will not be helped by marrying another man.
However, most immigration lawyers charge nothing to simply talk to them…wouldn’t be a bad idea to call a couple of them in your area.
Best of luck!
IANAn immigration lawyer, but I’ve worked for immigration lawyers for the past 10+ years. This question comes up all the time, and I can confirm that currently it is impossible to get U.S. permanent residence based on a same-sex marriage. (The Feds don’t care about the gender of anyone you are involved with, but they won’t let you immigrate based on a marriage to someone of the same gender.)
I suspect the OP already knows that, though.
Eva Luna, Immigration Paralegal
Thanks for the information. We’re well aware of this provision, and it’s the main reason we haven’t married in the U.S.* I know we’ve obeyed the letter of the law, and I don’t think we have committed visa fraud. Even though he came over to be with me, there was never any intention to use his current visa as a step towards permanent residency or immigration (impossible with an O-visa, anyway), and of course the work is legitimate and taxes are paid, etc. Gays, of course, do not qualify for K-series visas, so even in those states that recognize gay marriage, foreigners aren’t really allowed to marry Americans. We were just talking about this and I think we’ll be marrying in Canada in the near future.
ETA: To respond to Eva Luna: Yes, we know. In fact, you probably don’t remember, but you said that we’d probably have a really hard time getting the original O-visa when I posted about it here. We did work very hard to go through all the proper steps! That’s why we’re leaving the country next year. O-visas are not meant to be long-term, and none of the other paths are really open to us at the current time.
*My mother, then an illegal immigrant, married my father, an American citizen, but because they did not go through the proper channels she was barred from that route to permanent residency. She ended up applying and receiving residency and then citizenship under Reagan’s amnesty law in the 1980s.