By ALEX VAUGHN

According to unofficial estimates, about 36,000 bi-national couples – usually, a US citizen and a foreign-born national whose visa has expired – currently reside in the United States, living just as married people everywhere do. However, like other immigrants who lack permanent legal status, the foreign-born marriage partner lives in constant fear of detection and possible deportation.

In New Jersey, Josh Vandiver was married last year in Connecticut, where same-sex marriage is legal, to Henry Velandia, a citizen of Venezuela. Velandia’s visitor visa expired, and he said he hasn’t been able to get a green card, or permanent resident status, through an employer. Because the federal government doesn’t recognize the couple’s marriage, Vandiver cannot sponsor Velandia as a heterosexual person could sponsor a spouse. Now Velandia is facing possible deportation and could be returned to his home country after a hearing May 6.

Many bi-national heterosexual couples face the same dilemma. But, unlike their gay counterparts, they can apply for a US marriage visa, which confers automatic legal status on the foreign-born partner. Those visas are among the easiest to obtain. About 500,000 are granted annually on the assumption that married immigrants tend to be healthier and happier and, as studies show, tend to integrate more quickly into the American mainstream.

U.S. Rep. Rush Holt is pushing the Obama administration to halt deportation proceedings against the same-sex spouses of U.S. citizens. The Democrat wrote a letter to the federal Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday to make the request on behalf of the couple who live in his central New Jersey district. The case underscores the ambiguous status of the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as the union of a heterosexual man and a heterosexual woman. Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder said the government would no longer defend the law in court. But the administration continues to enforce it.  “In light of Attorney General Holder’s new guidance, I am asking you to suspend the deportation of all spouses of citizens in a same-sex marriage until a decision is reached on DOMA,” Holt wrote in his letter. “This is the right thing to do for Henry, Josh and countless others who are being victimized by this discriminatory and unconstitutional law.”

His plea follows confusion last week over how visas should be handled. The government briefly allowed applications for immigrant benefits for same-sex couples, then backtracked days later after a review of the laws.

Lavi Soloway, the couple’s immigration lawyer said that if the Defense of Marriage law is struck down, same-sex couples legally married in any state will be recognized as married by the federal government.

In fact, legislation like the Dream Act is already pending for gay immigrants without legal status. Known as the Uniting American Families Act, or UAFA, the bill would revise the family visa system to allow “permanent partners,” as well as “spouses,” to be sponsored by US citizens for a green card. The beauty of the legislation is that it doesn’t even require that DOMA and the traditional definition of marriage be overturned. It simply says that those without traditional marriage bonds can also be sponsored and like the Dream Act, the bill still enjoys widespread congressional support, including more than 100 co-sponsors in the House, and 25 in Senate. Even some leading Senate Republicans, like Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, both strong gay rights backers, have indicated that they may support the UAFA.

Two major supporters of immigration reform, the US Catholic Church and the National Association of Evangelicals, oppose UAFA and support DOMA. This political influence contributed to the dramatic about-face of the DHS. For a president desperate to get an immigration bill passed, and also to get re-elected (young white evangelicals swung his way in 2008), backing off on gay immigrant rights must have seemed like an easy, if cynical, choice.

Congressman Gutierrez is launching a nationwide campaign to demand that Obama live up to the pledges on immigration reform he made during the 2008 campaign, and gay rights groups plan to file suit in federal court to overturn DOMA’s prejudicial application to gay immigrants.