I didn't realize Glen Greenwald was gay and married to a foreign national

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http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/

Glenn,

I just wanted to drop you a line and express my deepest, most profound gratitude that you decided to highlight this issue. As is evident by many of the commenters, this is something that almost no one thinks about or even knows about and when you're someone who is affected by it, that can make for some lonely moments as you try to get a handle on your problems.

My husband of 13 years is also Brazilian and since his work visa expired 6 years ago, we've been living both in fear and in debt. Whatever savings we had were wiped out in our futile attempts to find some way - any way - for him to stay in this country legally. Well, it didn't work out (no surprise) and since he is adamant about never wanting to live in Brazil again (for a variety of reasons), here we are. I never thought I'd use this word to describe myself but with the loss of his earnings and the frantic attempts to fix the situation, we are pretty much destitute.

Poverty, I can live with. It's ultimately, for someone like myself (white, educated, middle class background) a solvable situation even if most days that road seems unbearably long. It's the fear and the sadness that is so devastating. Fear that he will somehow be found out and taken away from me and sadness because his family back home is poor and has little opportunity to travel, so he hasn't seen his father or brother in 14 years and has only seen his mother twice in that time. His parents are getting older and always in the back of my mind, I have a cold dread of the day when one of them gets sick or ultimately passes away because psychologically, I have no idea how he's going to be able to handle that or how I'm going to be able to help him through that. In addition, because he can't legally work here, his earnings are practically nil and like many people, that is devastating to his pride and self worth.

I don't know why I'm telling you all this. It's certainly not something you're naive about or need to be told about. I guess I just wanted to tell you how gratifying it was to see someone highlight this issue, especially someone who is so good at explaining complex legal and political issues to his readers. Even better, you're someone who is personally affected by it. You do great work and I wouldn't expect you to become a spokesperson for this sort of thing, but I would urge you to consider writing about it again when circumstances warrant. People just don't know about this and in my experience, even people who are adamantly opposed to gay marriage find this to be cruel and untenable.

So, thank you. For a moment yesterday I didn't feel quite so lonely just knowing that people were gaining an understanding of the issue.

[EFerrari]

1. He's there a good deal of the time. n/t

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2. I can understand why

given the way our country behaves toward multinational gay couples. He is on the lucky part of the break as he acknowledges. His husband comes from a country which lets him live there and he can do his job from there.