In the landmark case, United States v. Windsor (2013), the Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (1996), or DOMA – which had defined marriage as between a man and a woman only. Under this provision of DOMA, same-sex couples were denied access to hundreds of federal programs and benefits available to heterosexual couples, including immigration benefits.
Immigration reform is once again stalled, despite the fact that politicians on both sides of the aisle acknowledge that our immigration system is broken. There are a number of signs that the current immigration system is failing. Case in point: the backlog in immigration courts across the nation with over 350,000 ongoing deportation cases each year in a country where