Colette O'Neill

I am an Irish citizen, living in Boston, MA for the past 11 years. I have been with my American partner for 10 of those years and we exercised our legal right to get married here in Massachusetts this past October. It was a great day!

We are really contemplating a move to Ireland in the next five years. But how extremely sad is it that, if Irish law remains the same, I will be unable to return to my own home to live and have my partner accompany me, knowing that it is not deemed acceptable from an immigration perspective. While we are there, we will both need to work and if that is not an option without first finding an employer to sponsor my partner, then we simply cannot do it. As a couple, we have had to live that same way here in Massachusetts for several years, while I was awaiting my Green Card (that did finally come last August!) and we are really not prepared to do it all over. Where will this end?