United by Love, Exiled by Law - Martha McDevitt- Pugh

Immigration and Same Sex Couples

Martha McDevitt-Pugh is a love exile, a term she coined herself when she realized that there
was nothing free about her choice to live with her partner Lin in the Netherlands. At age
40, she fell in love with a friend she had met seventeen years earlier. The couple negotiated
an agreement to live together in the Netherlands for two years, until Lin’s son had finished
high school. Martha left a flourishing career in Silicon Valley, expecting to return. Only once
she left did Martha discover the immigration discrimination laws in the USA meant that her
temporary absence might lead to permanent exile, unless she banded together with others
to make change happen.