immediately and that was a trial in and of itself because i cam came from a very conservative community and i was rejected by my family and communality, but that issue /tk-fpblt compare to this immigration nightmare that we /tpaeuls. and though we ve been lucky and managed to stay together legally here, it s really put us through the ringer. we ve had to uproot and move /twaoeuls, she had to get a second-degree to stay on a student visa, which was a financial burden because that was expensive and we had to live on my income alone. it s been really difficult for her. she has felt like a perez /tpher in this country, too afraid to leave that she wouldn t get back in so she s missed saying /tkpwaold bye to the grandmother who raised her on her death bed and /pheultszed funerals of close families, /herpl brother s wedding, her niece s birth and didn t see her family for eight years so it s been really hard, but the most difficult part is that we live with every single day that sh
adopt this resolution. thank you. next speaker please. hi, thanks for having us. i m ashley and this is my partner ki and this issue affects us greatly. we met nine years ago and fell in love immediately and that was a trial in and of itself because i cam came from a very conservative community and i was rejected by my family and communality, but that issue /tk-fpblt compare to this immigration nightmare that we /tpaeuls. and though we ve been lucky and managed to stay together legally here, it s really put us through the ringer. we ve had to uproot and move /twaoeuls, she had to get a second-degree to stay on a student visa, which was a financial burden because that was expensive and we had to live on my income alone. it s been really difficult for her. she has felt like a perez /tpher in this country, too afraid to leave that she wouldn t get back in so she s missed saying /tkpwaold bye to the grandmother who raised her on her death bed and /pheultszed funerals of close
thank you very much. next speaker. good morning. i m a volunteer with [inaudible]. i want to add a few personal points to a topic that i m sure you know well. [inaudible] the law of the land does not recognize same sex partners as federally recognized marriages and what we need to do is to get rid of that distinction so that people like me can sponsor our same sex spouses for registration. i had to /khaoutz between my wife and my career. i took early retirement. she has been out of the country without me or we have both been out of the country. we want to be here legally and safely but because now i have applied for a green card for my wife last year in january, luckily it was not denied but we are under further review and we ve been under further review for eight months. we don t have a future we can control. because of our processing my wife hasn t been able to leave the country for over two years. that means instead of become exiles we are prisoners of law as we say in
good evening. and we begin tonight with that picture we could not believe, people stopped to gasp across the world. a newborn, just 2 weeks old, pulled alive from the rubble in turkey. more than 300 people perished in that 7.2 earthquake. the little girl s name is azra, who means purity in arabic. and tonight, abc s alex marquardt is in the town of ercis to tell us her story amid so many others. reporter: rescuers dug five feverishly today in the rubble of this apartment building, looking for any trace of survivors. then, word came that a baby was found alive. just 14 days old, azra came out of the rubble naked and was quickly wrapped in a blanket. she was born prematurely. today, after 47 hours in that pile of stone, she was found, clinging to her mother and grandmother. the rescuer who pulled her out told us he felt like he was holding his own child. to bring life back into this world is the highest satisfaction, he said. azra was rushed to the hospital. the rescuers we
might make you happier, right now, tonight? good evening. it was the crime that shattered so many lives, robbed people of their life savings and turned bernie madoff into one of the most reviled names in america. and late today, we learned bernie madoff s wife, ruth, says she and her husband were so crushed by the scandal, they tried to take their own lives. it s a statement that s provoked a turbulent reaction from those who know a lot about the biggest ponzi scheme in american history. and abc s chief investigative correspondent brian ross has been on this story from the very beginning, he wrote the book on the madoffs, and he begins our news cast tonight. reporter: according to her interview, ruth and bernie madoff tried to kill themselves on christmas eve, in this new york city penthouse apartment. it was just two weeks after madoff had been arrested and his thousands of victims realized he had cheated them out of billions of dollars. he and she both faced death threa