Like many married couples, Pamela Hathaway and Lucie Ferrari chat and plan their day over their morning coffee.

Unlike most spouses, they have to do so using videoconferencing, Skype calls over the Web or a telephone because they cannot legally be together.

Hathaway, 32, is a U.S. citizen. Ferrari, 40, is a French citizen whose work visa ran out a year ago, forcing her to quit her job as a teacher in Sun Prairie and leave the country. The couple married in Canada in January, but U.S. immigration policy doesn't recognize same-sex couples, even ones that have been legally married, so Hathaway cannot sponsor Ferrari for U.S. immigration.

So Ferrari calls Hathaway at their Madison home from more than 2,000 miles away in Vanderhoof, British Columbia, where she moved a year ago to teach French.

Hathaway shows Ferrari their three cats here in Madison or carries her laptop into the backyard to show progress in their garden. Sometimes, Hathaway said, one of them will decide to start dishes or laundry while they chat and the other will do the same so they feel like they're doing it "together."

"We try and bring some normalcy to our situation," Hathaway said. "But what's become normal now is really absurd if you think about it."

Hathaway also calls it absurd that she is being forced to choose between her spouse and her country. But she is currently packing their belongings and quitting her job as a neighborhood organizer so she can move to Canada to be with Ferrari.

A year ago Ferrari left her post as a popular French teacher at Sun Prairie High School, where she is so missed the school has held her job in case she can return. Hathaway is seeking renters for their South Side home, hoping they will be able to legally return to Madison one day.

They pin much of that hope on a congressional bill called the Uniting American Families Act, which would amend immigration law to add the three words "or permanent partners" after each mention of spouse.

"It's a complicated situation and a very simple solution," Hathaway said. "If the laws change, our hope is to come back because we've built a life here. We don't want to move."

Contentious issues

The Uniting American Families Act, first introduced in 2000, brings together two hot-button issues: immigration and same-sex relationships. The measure, introduced again in May 2007 by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and Sen. Patrick Leahy D-Vt., is in committee.

Immigration Equality, a New York-based group of immigration lawyers who advocate for this reform, commissioned a study based on the 2000 census that showed more than 35,000 same-sex binational couples. (The census records 594,391 same-sex couples, 6 percent comprised of one citizen and one non-citizen.)

"We've seen enormous change," said Rachel Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality. "Until 1990 it was on the books that the U.S. would not admit people if you were gay. ... The exclusion of same-sex families is not accidental."

There has been little criticism of this bill, in part because it appears stuck in committee. Family Research Council, a conservative Christian policy group tied to James Dobson, is one of the few groups that has voiced opposition. It's policy vice president Peter Sprigg wrote on its Web site, "FRC does not believe that homosexual relationships are the equivalent of marriage, and we therefore oppose any legislation that would treat such relationships as the equivalent of marriage."

Advocates hope to elect a president who would be willing to sign the act into law. Indeed, it is a topic the top Democratic presidential primary contenders, including Sen. Barack Obama, addressed and supported in principle. Yet even some sympathetic politicians raise the question of whether adding "permanent partners" would open the door to more immigration fraud, because a couple doesn't have to be married to apply.

Tiven says no. Other factors must be proven, such as financial interdependence and an intended lifelong commitment.

"In reality, it is quite difficult to get a green card, even for an opposite-sex marriage," Tiven said. "There's a tremendous burden with an involved application and you have to sign an affidavit that you will support the person for 10 years and they won't become a public burden. And that obligation can outlast the marriage." She adds that current penalties for fraud, including fines and jail time, would apply to same-sex couples too.

In June, U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, formed an LGBT Equality Caucus in the House, which already has 70 members, and she plans to have the caucus tackle "immigration discrimination."

Baldwin, who is gay, is among the 99 co-sponsors of the Uniting American Families Act in the House. There are 14 in the Senate, including Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, a Democrat.

"I was moved to sign on because of compelling and devastating stories I've heard from constituents who have fallen in love and been split apart by an immigration law," Baldwin said. While the act has sat in committee, she hopes that in a future session, "with a president who could view this favorably," it will advance, perhaps as a part of larger immigration reform.

Madison meeting

Ferrari and Hathaway met at WYOU community television station in Madison where Ferrari produced a weekly show and Hathaway served on the board. Both were active in a variety of volunteer posts. At Sun Prairie High School, Ferrari led a French Club and when asked by kids who knew her from the halls to form a club for black students, she did, also helping set up the first Black History Month school assembly.

"A lot of kids, after she left, did not even want to take French anymore," said Nina Molina, a French and ELS (English as second language) teacher at Sun Prairie High School. "She was great at motivating the kids. That's why we miss her so much."

While Sun Prairie has hired a substitute teacher in hopes that Ferrari can return, Hathaway works for a small nonprofit that cannot afford to hold her job. At the end of July she resigned as executive director of the East Isthmus Neighborhoods Planning Council. She also left the South Madison Community Housing Team, which works on affordable housing and mortgage issues.

"It's not just about me and Lucie," Hathaway said. "It has ripples."

Both women have begun an intense application process to become permanent residents of Canada, where being bilingual, educated and employable bodes well for them in the Canadian point system that determines residency. After filling out pounds of paperwork, Hathaway plans to head to the Canadian border this month.

"The information I have is that the only way to do it is to physically go to the border with proof of our relationship and Lucie's work permit and hope they let me cross," Hathaway said. "So that's what I'm doing. I think the hardest thing about it is knowing that even though I'm a citizen like anybody, in order to be with the person I love I have to leave my country."