Same-sex couple gives birth to twins: one child was given US citizenship, the other was not

A federal judge in California ruled that the same-sex couple twin son is an American citizen since birth, reversing the decision of the US State Department, which granted status only to his brother, writes NBC.

Фото: Depositphotos

The State Department was wrong in denying 2-year-old Ethan Dwash-Banks citizenship, district judge John Walter found out.

The parents of the twins Andrew and Elad Dwash-Banks filed a lawsuit in the hope that their twin son would receive the same citizenship as his brother Eden.

The boys were conceived of donor egg and sperm from different fathers. One of them is American, and the other is an Israeli citizen. Children were born to a surrogate mother with a difference of several minutes.

Subsequently, the US government granted citizenship only to Aiden, who, as DNA tests showed, was the biological son of Andrew, a US citizen. Ethan was conceived by the sperm of Elada Dawash-Banks, an Israeli citizen.

Their lawsuit was one of two LGBT immigrant rights groups filed last year, which stated that the State Department discriminated against same-sex binary couples by denying them citizenship at birth.

In cases filed in Los Angeles and Washington by Immigration Equality, it says that children of a US citizen who marry abroad have the right to US citizenship at birth, regardless of where they were born, even if the other parent is a foreigner .

The State Department did not immediately respond to an e-mail asking for comment on the decision. Earlier, the department referred to the manual on its website, which stated that for citizenship at birth there must be a biological connection with a US citizen.

Aaron Morris, executive director of Immigration Equality, said the State Department had incorrectly applied policies for children born out of wedlock to same-sex couples.

The judge agreed, writing that the State Department's charter does not contain a wording “requiring blood relations between a person and a father” for obtaining citizenship at birth. ”

Andrew Dvash-Banks studied in Israel, where he met his future husband Elad, an Israeli citizen. Since they couldn’t legally marry in the US or in Israel at the time, they moved to Canada, where they got married in 2010. In September 2016, their children were born from a surrogate mother.

Everything looked good until the couple brought their children to the American consulate in Toronto a few months later to apply for citizenship. The woman behind the desk began to ask questions that they found shocking and humiliating.

At the consulate, they were told that employees could, at their discretion, require DNA testing, which would show who is the biological father of each boy, and without these tests, the twins cannot obtain citizenship.

The men knew that Andrew was Aiden's biological father, and Elad was Ethan's, but they kept it a secret and were not going to tell anyone.

After presenting the results of DNA analysis, which proved who the father of each boy was, the March couple 2 received a large and small envelope from the USA. Big was with Aiden's passport. Another was a letter notifying Andrew that Ethan’s application was rejected.

Since then, the family moved to Los Angeles to get closer to the family of Andrew Dvash-Banks.

Another case concerns two women, one from the USA and the other from Italy, who met in New York, got married in London and each had a son. The State Department did not recognize the couple’s marriage, the lawsuit states, and granted citizenship only to a boy whose biological mother was born and raised in the United States.

Recall that in the US, same-sex marriage is legal throughout the country, since the Supreme Court accepted the corresponding solution in 2015 year. But in other respects, US marriage laws are determined at the state level. Previously ForumDaily told how book gay marriage in the US.

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