applicant and the district supervisor to work out a set of conditions that makes sense. and i haven't been to cafe royal, but i certainly plan to be there. so with that, if we can take that motion without objection. thank you very much. and colleagues, i'd like to move on to item number 3. i know that a number of people have to leave so if we can take item number three out of order. >> thank you mr. chair. also quick correction. the items acted upon today will appear on the june 4 meeting. item number 3 is an [inaudible] that includes all families, /eupbl colluding same sex couples. >> thank you very much. i know that there are people leaving.

this is an item that i have introduced and is to purr purr pursuant -- why don't we take a quick one minute break. we are back on. this is an item that i introduced and it speaks to a very important issue that's being handled in washington dc. it's a resolution that urges united states congress to consider comprehensive immigration

reform to make sure includes members of the lgtb community. we will be hearing today from many lg [inaudible] immigration reform, goes against the very principal that we as a country have always held dear, which is the principal of of respecting and valuing families. families are made up of lgtb members.

there are many amendments being considered and a key question is whether or not lgtb families will be a part of those amendments and there's an amendment that would include the lg tb families in this bill. we call on the congress and senate to support this. we know that senator boxer has come out in support of that and we thank her for that. and now we ask the senior senator of california to support the inclusion of lgtb families in this bill. senator has a history of supporting lgtb rights and this is the time to demonstrate consistency with that /h*euls write and with

that i want to thank also my colleagues on the board of supervisors who have cosponsored this item with me -- supervisor avalos, wiener, president david chiu. and i think that the message that will be sent from san francisco today is that we cannot leave anyone behind. supervisor yee, unless you want to make any remarks we can open it up to public comment. if any member

of the public would like to speak, please line up. please go forward. >> thank you. my name is eric, i'm an organizer of [inaudible] so people who have been impacted by this issue directly. we've been around for over 12 years as long as [inaudible] has been introduced in congress. we're at the intersection of lgtb movement

as well as [inaudible] movement. we're /sr-rb involved here locally in organizing members of the san francisco bay immigrant justice coalition where i'm happy to say we've received outpouring of support. so it's a really strong issue that cuts across multiple issues. i personally have been impacted by this issue. i partner of nine years is actually undocumented and getting a green card through his church, but they pulled the support because they didn't want to support an openly gay

choir director. this is something we feel really impacted by. supervisor campos said we want to urge senior senator to support the [inaudible] amendment and we want him to support not only married couples, but also civil union couples. we're going to be leaving from here and delivering over 6000 petitionings, 6000 names to senator's office at noon today. these names were collected ed in the last week. >> thank you very much. next speaker please. >> i have a document for the

overhead. my name is brian, i've been together with my husband for over 11 years. i filed a green card for my husband based on our marriage. we were denied. your spouse is not a person of the opposite sex, therefore you doma must be desighed. we've suffered tragic results because of this discrimination. his sisters are [inaudible] immigration and customs enforce /-pl picked up my husband in 2011. from there

they put him in an overcrowded facility in dublin, then put him into a visitor's cell which is another glass window with another person, changed the guards, left him there without realizing he was there. then they put him into a general holding cell with about 30 other people. so while i was going to bed warm in bed, he was going to bed in jail. we will be back in immigration court [inaudible] he will be banned from this country for ten years and we will seek refuge [inaudible] not being

completed. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> good morning. i'm a volunteer with [inaudible]. i want to add a few personal points to a topic that i'm sure you know well. [inaudible] the law of the land does not recognize same sex partners as federally recognized marriages and what we need to do is to get rid of that distinction so that people like me can sponsor our same sex spouses for registration. i had to /khaoutz between my wife and my career. i took early retirement. she has been out of the country without me or we have both been out of the country. we want to be here

legally and safely but because now i have applied for a green card for my wife last year in january, luckily it was not denied but we are under further review and we've been under further review for eight months. we don't have a future we can control. because of our processing my wife hasn't been able to leave the country for over two years. that means instead of become exiles we are prisoners of law as we say in california. we had to watch our son get married on skype because we couldn't go to scotland to watch. >> thank you. next speaker.

>> good morn. i'm the founder of the [inaudible] foundation with advocates for lgtb americans who are forced out of the country to be with persons we love. i'm also the head of the democrats [inaudible] immigration task force and i had the honor of being the dell grate to obama [inaudible] i was born in san francisco raised in i moved to the nether lands 13 years ago because my relationship with my wife lynn isn't recognized by law. when i fell in love with my wife, i faced the choice that no u.s. citizen should have to make. i had to

/khaoutz between the person i of and my country. i chose love and in doing that i gave up my job, my career to start over in a new country and a new language. other countries don't embrace immigrants the same way we do in this country. i visit california whenever i can. i just arrived yesterday to be with my family. my mom's 84 years old now and her health state is steadily declining. we're struggling to find a way to keep her safe and there's no clear answer in sight. it really breaks my heart not to be able to be here to support her. i should not have to move thousands of miles away to become /tp*eurls class citizens in another country. we need to change that. i hope that senator will support our

families. >> thank you for sharing your stories. next spoker please. r r >> i'm a united states citizen and my wife is a british citizen and we were married last month and a week after we met i had to say good buy to her because i am not eligible to sponsor her and there's no pathway to citizenship for same sex financial couples. and i can't really express the hardship that we go through. it's something absolutely incredible that no one should have to /tpaeuls choosing between their country and the person they love. and if we were of different genders, i would be able to apply for a green card and sponsor them. and it just -- even though we were married, there's no pathway for me to do that so we were forced to live apart. and

america can do better and it should do better and comprehensive immigration reform needs to include all families. as it stands, until the laws are changed, there is no future for me and my wife here in america. and that is deeply just more than any and all should have to go through. so i urge this resolution to go forward and that senator comes on board and starts [inaudible] this issue for all of us. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> good morning. my name is kathy, i'm a volunteer for [inaudible] immigration. like more san francisco citizens,

i've come here from somewhere else. i used to live in connecticut and new york where there's marriage equality. we also have marriage quality here for a little while, as you all know. but that doesn't matter whether i married my beautiful australian wife here, new york or canada, where we were finally married. it is a nightmare if you are in a same sex binational relationship. all of our stories are different, how we met. we met here in san francisco at the lexington club at 19th. we live together in the tender knob, [inaudible] which is south of [inaudible]. we've

been together 12 years but neither our domestic partnership in 2003 or our marriage two years ago has helped us [inaudible] for her work in her booming technology sector. five years ago she qualified for a /tkpwraoepbl card but that remains in the backlog. so to keep things short i'd like to encourage you to help us ask senator to support us and support same sex binationals and comprehensive immigration reform. >> my name is chris, i'm a long time [inaudible] elect /-ld representatives in congress want to take immigration reform

hostage. as someone who knows what it was like growing up in a con severabletive small tow in virginia, i see their objections for what they are. doma was a bad law when it was passed in 1996 and it's a bad law now. i want to thank you for the opportunity to speak today about inclusive immigration reform. your our fellow citizens and i know we're preaching to you as the choir, but as we wait for the supreme to rule on doma and we hope [inaudible] and inclusive, i must speak out in support of the uniting families act. i speak to the need that [inaudible] language is included in any immigration

reform bill. we really need this piece in place, and it will, tend , /tepbld stay with me as i battled hiv related in the mid 90s. we had no idea i would be alive. the cost of this -- he wasn't able to travel when his mom died unexpectedly. i'm able to travel to germany. we're business owners, we run a business, [inaudible] and i thank /kwroulg for your support and your encouragement of senator to support us as well. >> speaker, please. thank you. >> my name is john and i'm the

board of directors [inaudible] this year i celebrate 30 years as a san francisco citizen and [inaudible] thanks to a very brief kennedy administration program. he's one of the lucky ones. we are a family deeply in love. we do all the things that families do. last year after coming home from my other mother's funeral, his father here became increasingly frail and so he was eventually unable to get out and enjoy all those delicious custards that we are able to enjoy here in san francisco so i learned how to make those things for him. when his dad passed, i planned the funeral myself. we are a

lucky couple, but many couples are not so lucky in san francisco and california and throughout the world. they live in fear that the enormous hand of government will step into their families and separate them at crucial moments like /phaoeupbl and it's like a double closet and we know the cost to the city and to the citizens. they must hide from immigration authorities and some points not. sometimes the american wants to go overseas because it's more welcoming there. in this case we're sendingal [inaudible] one small as peck to full equality and so i urge you to take this small step and urge senator to take this step to help us get equal. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker

please. >> good morning. i'm [inaudible] an immigrant from the philippines, a minister and a gay woman living in this country with my [inaudible]. all equally important to me important to me that we are also becoming new mothers this summer. june 21, /#20g 09 was the most difficult day of our life as a couple. jennifer received the denial of my green card application after five years of waiting. feeling betrayed by her own government, jennifer packed our apartment and followed me to vancouver canada. she knew that she could only stay in canada for a limited time because my u.s. visa was also the basis of my

job as a minister. i also lost the ability to support us. the current immigration system and the denial of same sex couples are too interlocking in /skwruls /teus [inaudible] my family. we stayed if canada for four months while my church worked hard and paid a fortune in legal fees to fight these /eupbl justices. i am one of the lucky citizens who was able to get [inaudible] permanent separation, but also emotional [inaudible] my faith accepts me for who i am and also affirms that my relationship with jennifer is as sacred as /tpheupbg else who lives in a loving and /kphuted relationship. i hope you will

change the law of this country that will support and protect the rights of lgtb couples. no one should live in fear that his or her partner will be deported. >> my husband of 23 years is from [inaudible] he became an american citizen. it was a great day for us for many reasons, but one thing is it meant we could plan a solid future together, buy a home and adopt our son who is the light of our leaves the laws /epbl abled us to have this moment and it was only later that i realized that many other binational gay couples just like us could never have such a moment or future. in my own perish in recent years two

beautiful strong gay couples have had to move to canada because our broken immigration system would not allow them to build a life together. i hear heart breaking stories from many families torn apart by unjust immigration laws. we have to stop these injustices. but what is true for these asian and latino families in my neighborhood is no less true for gay families. if a gay father is [inaudible] any other family. all families need and deserve the same protections and i real /aoeutz that the faith community is divided on this herbal shoe across the country. i understand that some have said that if there are any protections for gay families into this bill they will oppose the entire bill. in effect they are say that they are ready to throw the entire immigrant community under the bus in order to insert their own teachings

against ho homosexuality. this is grossly irresponsible. we need protections for all our families, both gay and straight. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> my name's [inaudible] wrong. i am with an organization that works with lg /t*rbgb [inaudible] and ray [inaudible] at the intersection of these two communities. i

think it's needless to say that the people we call our family are essential. they are the people who care for us when we're sick, they celebrate our joys with us, they build lives and homes with us and they're the people that wake up a little earlier than we do to make us coffee and oatmeal in the morning. family, whether that's our parents our brothers, sisters or partners, it's essential for what it means to be here where we are. i think many of us can agree that partnership is a core part of family for so many of us who are part of lgtb en/khraoudz fighting just to love the people that we love openly and without shame. and we fight just to hold our partner's hand when we walk down the street so of course we're /tkpwoupbg to fight to be able to live and love in the same country. today i'm thinking about a binational couple that i know.

they're the kind of people who pack lunches for each other and leave little love notes underneath their food, they create elaborate birthday surprises for each other. i know they want to spend the rest of their lives together. one is on a visa right now but her time is running occupant and i don't want to imagine what length they'll have to go through and give up in order to stay together. i'm here because the lgtb needs immigration reform that includes all of our families. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> good morning and thank /kwroug for having this gathering. my name is ava, i am a board /phebl of the

jewish community [inaudible] in the san francisco bay area. i'm here to remind you that our communality stands behind inclusivity of all families, no matter their description, no matter their gender, no matter what they look like or come from. as we all know /-rbgsz and many of us believe, the holy one with many nails created um of us equal /hru. not only that, they have equal rights in front of the holy one and they must have equal rights here in this condition country. i hope you will do everything you can and tell /uls what it is we can do to support and comprehensive immigration bill that includes all families, all individuals.

we are all part of the same people. thank you. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> good morning and thank you so much to super supervisor cam pos. california is a home to the largest population of immigration of immigrants in the united states. immigrants are family members, friends, neighbors and coworkers and many of us like myself are immigrants. california's communities need common sense immigration policies that up hold our basic values and protect the rights we hold dear. protection of the unity of the family must re/phaeupbl at the heart of immigration law and policy. we recognize that