For love or country

Joseph Pacatte calls Boston home, but he is willing to move abroad for love.

Pacatte lives in the South End with his partner, Edgar, a computer network administrator who came to Boston from Colombia on a student visa and lives here now on a work visa. (Edgar asked that his last name not be published for fear it could hamper his immigration efforts.) If the couple were heterosexual, they could get married and there would be a green card and permanent residency for Edgar. But because both are men, their union isn't recognized by federal laws -- and won't be even if they get married.

Canada, however, recognizes same-sex unions for immigration purposes, and Pacatte and Edgar say they will move there if it is the only way for them to stay together. They have filled out permanent resident forms to immigrate to Canada in case Edgar's visa is not renewed.

"If we were straight, it would take 20 minutes to go to the federal building and resolve this," says Pacatte, a software engineer who met Edgar in 1996. They have been living together for five years. Edgar's work visa is good only for another two. Although he could renew it for three years, it's not a permanent solution. "There is really absolutely nothing I can do for him as my partner. This is the appeal about leaving and going to another country. You are at least in control."

"There is always an uncertainty," Edgar says. "We want to have a house, but we don't even know if we are going to be in this country."

There are thousands of Americans with foreign-born same-sex partners who would like to live here permanently, according to gay immigration groups. Foreigners can live, work, and study here with visas, but those are designed for temporary stays. A bill in Congress would add "permanent partner" to the Immigration and Nationality Act wherever the word "spouse" appears, but it has drawn criticism and isn't likely to go anywhere while Republicans are in power. Some critics say it would circumvent gay marriage, and others say it would erode traditional family values.

"Immigrants are coming to this country to build for themselves a better way of life," says Glenn Stanton, director of social research at Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based group that promotes traditional values. "The way we build a strong and healthy society is to have good, strong family values, and marital status significantly impacts on that. We would resist anything that would make relative all family relationships, because all family relationships do not provide the same level of human well-being and benefits for society."

Most US citizens can sponsor their children, parents, or spouses as immigrants. Gays cannot do that for their partners. And though gay binational couples may marry in Massachusetts beginning in May, it won't do anything to help the foreign-born partners gain citizenship or permanent residency. While marriage is regulated by the states, immigration is controlled by the federal government, and the Defense of Marriage Act, signed by President Clinton, defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

The foreign-born partner may stay here temporarily with a student, tourist, or extended work visa. Failing that, the couples face less attractive choices: finding a US employer to sponsor the foreign-born member as an employee, commuting between two countries, or living here illegally, according to a website run by Love Sees No Borders, a California-based gay immigration advocacy group that estimates there are at least 100,000 binational couples in the United States. Often they leave the country or split up.

"The US policies are outdated and unfair," says Adam Francoeur, program director of the New York-based Immigration Equality, a gay and lesbian immigration rights task force that helps same-sex couples with legal and immigration advice. "The US is far behind many other industrial nations in regards to immigration policy toward gays and lesbians."

For people whose homelands -- such as Germany, Brazil, Canada, or England -- are friendly toward gay partners, moving there has become a last resort. That's what Robin Schacht and her British partner, Melanie Rendall, did.

"We always felt that pressure of the ticking clock on our time together in the US," says Schacht, 29, who shared an apartment near Harvard Square with Rendall, 31.

They met in 1994 while working at a summer camp in West Virginia. They dashed back and forth between England and Boston over the years with help from tourist, student, and work visas; they were able to live in Cambridge because Rendall had a work visa through her job as a research assistant in psychology at a Boston hospital while Schacht worked as a researcher at a Harvard psychology lab.

When Rendall's visa expired, the couple set off to travel through Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. They settled in London for academic pursuits but also because Rendall, as a British citizen, can sponsor Schacht as her partner for immigration. England has a gay-friendly immigration procedure, one Schacht successfully sailed through last August and hopes the United States will adopt someday.

"I was granted permanent residency in the United Kingdom after just one 30-minute visit to the British Consulate in New York City," Schacht says.

For now, the couple enjoy their London two-bedroom flat, from which they've followed the developments in Massachusetts on gay marriage. They haven't ruled out returning to Boston.

"It would be wonderful to know that the possibility existed that we could return there to live for good one day," Schacht says.

Johnny Diaz can be reached at jodiaz@globe.com.