(678) Kết Hôn Với Chú, Bị Dọa Đuổi Về VN, 14 Năm Tòa Mỹ Mới OK

Kết Hôn Với Chú, Bị Dọa Đuổi Về VN, 14 Năm Tòa Mỹ Mới OK

30/10/2014 - NEW YORK (VB) -- Tòa cao nhất của tiêu bang New York đã công nhận rằng việc kết hôn của công dân Việt Nam -- cô Huyen Nguyen, 34 tuổi -- và chồng cô là công dân Mỹ tên Vu Truong, 38 tuổi, là hợp pháp sau 14 năm hăm dọa trục xuất cô Huyen Nguyen về VN.

Luật sư của 2 vợ chồng là Michael Marszalkowski nói rằng ông hạnh phúc khi Chánh án Robert Smith của Tòa Kháng Án viết rằng hai người có họ hàng chú-họ và cháu-họ nhưng mức độ họ xa đủ để các cuộc hôn nhân như thế là hợp pháp ở New York cho tới năm 1893 và tiểu bang Rhode Island cho phép như thế.
Mẹ cô Huyen Nguyen là em nửa dòng máu với Vu Truong.
Huyen Nguyen và Vu Truong kết hôn năm 2000 tại Rochester, bị tòa di trú hăm dọa trục xuất vì cho là “loạn luân” nên không công nhận hôn lễ.
Hai vợ chông đã khiếu nại, kháng án cả 14 năm nay.
Hiện thời hai người, Huyen và chồng, một tài xế xe vận tải, vẫn cư ngụ ở Rochester và không có con.
Cô Huyen Nguyen kiện lên Bộ Trưởng Tư Pháp Mỹ Eric Holder, người thực hiện luật di trú Hoa Kỳ.

Chuyên gia về luật gia đình Michael Stutman nói rằng Mỹ từ lâu đã có những cuộc hôn nhân cận huyết ở độ xa mà không bị xem là loạn luân, như anh em họ, nổi tiếng nhất là trường hợp Tổng Thống FDR và vợ là Eleanor Roosevelt.

NY State blesses ‘incest’ marriage between uncle, niece

By Julia Marsh

October 29, 2014

The state’s highest court has toppled a cultural taboo — legalizing a degree of incest, at least between an uncle and niece — in a unanimous ruling.

While the laws against “parent-child and brother-sister marriages . . . are grounded in the almost universal horror with which such marriages are viewed . . . there is no comparably strong objection to uncle-niece marriages,” Tuesday’s ruling reads.

Judge Robert Smith of the Court of Appeals wrote that such unions were lawful in New York until 1893 and Rhode Island allows them.

The decision stems from a case brought by Vietnamese citizen Huyen Nguyen, 34, a woman who had appealed a ruling by an immigration judge.

The judge had tried to boot her from the United States after declaring that her 2000 marriage in Rochester to her mother’s half-brother was invalid.

Nguyen and her husband, Vu Truong, 38, appealed and won.

“I’m very happy for my clients,” said their lawyer, Michael Marszalkowski.

“They’ve been married 14 years now, but unfortunately, for half the time, there has been this concern over their heads about whether [the immigration issue] could be resolved. Thankfully, now it has been,” Marszalkowski said.

Marszalkowski said he won the case by zeroing in on the language of the state’s domestic-relations law.

The statute reads that “a marriage is incestuous and void whether the relatives are legitimate or illegitimate between either: 1. An ancestor and a descendant; 2. A brother and sister of either the whole or half blood; 3. An uncle and niece or an aunt and nephew.”

Incest is a crime punishable by a $50 to $100 fine and up to six months in jail.

Marszalkowski determined that as a matter of consanguinity, or blood relations, half-uncles and nieces share the same level of genetic ties as first cousins — or only one-eighth the same DNA.

“It really was the equivalent of cousins marrying, which has been allowed in New York state for well over 100 years,” Marszalkowski said.

Those on the six-person judicial panel acknowledged that they are not scientists, but noted that the “genetic risk in a half-uncle, half-niece relationship is half what it would be if the parties were related by the full blood.”

Nguyen and her husband, a truck driver, still live in Rochester and do not have any children.

She sued the US Attorney General Eric Holder, who enforces the country’s immigration laws.

A spokesman from his office did not return a message.

Family law expert Michael Stutman of the firm Mishcon de Reya, who is not involved in the case, said the ruling is in synch with today’s modern families.

“As people are more mobile and living longer marriages are ending and people remarry and you get blended families with step children and half children,” Stutman reasoned.

“There are plenty of other societies that allow so-called intermarriage without worrying about genetic defects. And frankly we have a long history of cousins marrying each other, take FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt,” he said.

The president and his wife were fifth cousins once removed.

http://nypost.com/2014/10/29/new-york-state-blesses-incest-marriage-between-uncle-niece/