Victim is suing Louisiana.
A contentious case of a Louisiana man, a former refugee who doesn’t have a country status and has been denied the right to get married to a US woman, is suing to get the situation reversed.
Viet “Victor” Anh Vo — who was born in an Indonesian refugee camp after his parents fled Vietnam — is suing the state of Louisiana after being denied the right to get married, according to a complaint filed last week, reported Think Progress.
Vo was brought to the country as a three-month-old baby. He became a U.S. citizen when he was eight years old. He was never issued a birth certificate and is recognized by neither Indonesia nor Vietnam.
That’s why Vo and his fiancee — who is a U.S. citizen — have been unable to get legally married. A new state law that went into effect earlier this year requires immigrants to produce specific documents like a copy of their birth certificate and an unexpired visa in order to get a marriage license.
Had Vo and his fiancée gotten married before December 31, 2015, they likely could have gotten a birth certificate waiver. But now that Louisiana’s law is in place, they don’t have any options.
“Despite the fact that Mr. Vo provided other official documents to establish his identity, including a Social Security Number and a Louisiana state driver’s license, the Vermilion Parish Clerk of Court refused to approve Mr. Vo and Ms. Pham’s marriage license application,” the complaint reads in part, the Think Progress report said .
Even after Vo returned to three separate clerks with a letter explaining why he couldn’t get a birth certificate, the couple was still denied a marriage license.
Vo’s complaint alleges that the state law violates the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it is specifically intended to discriminate against people born outside the country. He’s being represented by the advocacy groups New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice and the National Immigration Law Center.
State Rep. Valerie Hodges (R-LA), the sponsor of the legislation, said in January that the law would prevent undocumented immigrants from marrying solely to get immigration benefits and would help prevent terrorists from getting green cards and citizenship.
Immigrant advocates say Louisiana’s law is unnecessary because there isn’t much evidence that this type of marriage fraud is in fact occurring.