 MYFOXNY.COM - Henry Velandia and Josh Vandiver married in Montville, Connecticut on August 29, 2010. Velandia goes before his immigration judge in Newark, N.J., on November 17, 2010. Henry Velandia is in deportation proceedings because the Defense of Marriage Act prevents Josh Vandiver from sponsoring him for residency. The couple hosted a presentation about their campaign Thursday afternoon in Whitman College, and they have launched a Facebook group — “Save our Marriage – Stop the Deportation of Henry Velandia” — that has gained more than 1,000 supporters in two days. Holt said that he was opposed to the law and was in support of gay rights. Vandiver, who is from Colorado, received his undergraduate degree from Harvard, spent a year at Oxford and is now in his sixth year of study for his Ph.D. in the politics department at Princeton. Velandia, who met Vandiver online, emigrated from Venezuela in 2002. He has appeared in the Spanish-language television show “Mira Quien Baila” and now teaches salsa five days a week at his dance school.
– A gay couple who were legally married in Connecticut now face being split up by the Defense of Marriage Act. Princeton PhD student Josh Vandiver's husband is a Venezuelan citizen facing deportation because his work visa has expired. The law prevents Vandiver from sponsoring his husband for residency and he is fighting to have the deportation delayed until the Supreme Court rules on the issue, Fox reports. Vandiver says he'll leave the country with his husband if he has to. "We would be willing to leave this country together and go someplace like the UK or Europe or Canada where we could be together, but I don’t want to be a refugee in my own country,” Vandiver tells the Daily Princetonian. “I never imagined that I would face this kind of discrimination from my own country and potentially have to flee it to be with the one I love.”