Rubio: Gay couple amendment to immigration bill a poison pill
Yahoo News reports:
Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, a co-author and key proponent of the Senate immigration bill, said he will revoke his support if an amendment is added that allows gay Americans to petition for same-sex spouses living abroad to secure a green card.
“If this bill has in it something that gives gay couples immigration rights and so forth, it kills the bill. I’m done,” Rubio said Thursday during an interview on the Andrea Tantaros Show. “I’m off it, and I’ve said that repeatedly. I don’t think that’s going to happen and it shouldn’t happen. This is already a difficult enough issue as it is.”
The amendment, introduced by Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, would grant green cards to foreign partners of gay Americans. Leahy originally introduced the measure during the Senate Judiciary Committee markup of the bill, but he withdrew it under pressure from Republican lawmakers who said it would reduce the chance of the bill passing. [Emphasis added]
The Leahy amendment states in part:
Notwithstanding section 7 of title 1, United States 8 Code, an individual shall be considered a ‘spouse’ and a marriage shall be considered a ‘marriage’ for the purposes 10 of this Act if—
(1) the marriage of the individual is valid in the State in which the marriage was entered into; or
(2) in the case of a marriage entered into outside of any State, the marriage is valid in the place in which the marriage was entered into and the marriage could have been entered into in a State..
