Dear Friend and Reader:<\/p>\n
After a year of twists and turns, reporting on the news, astrology and special interests and editing Planet Waves’ editions each day, I’m stepping down as Associate Editor, effective today.<\/p>\n
As I’ve written here before, my partner of three years is Irish and I’m American. We’ve been trying, without success, to be in the same place at the same time.<\/p>\n
Though the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA)<\/a> could alter our immigration situation, we simply can’t wait any longer for laws to change and are heading off on an adventure instead.<\/p>\n At the end of March, I’m going back to Dublin to apply for permanent residency as her de facto partner. This is not officially legal in Ireland, but because a civil partnership bill will be enacted soon, the country has been allowing same-sex couples to file for permanent residency visas.<\/p>\n Regardless of how this initial application works out, we’ll be moving over the summer to another European city, where we’ll have more rights as a same-sex couple, and hopefully more employment opportunities in a different economy. Currently, we’re deciding between Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin.<\/p>\n The whole process involves a lot of upheaval and paperwork, so I’m leaving you in the capable and talented hands of Eric Francis, Anatoly Ryzhenko and the new Associate Editor, Moira Clune.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It’s been an absolute honor to work for Planet Waves, the writing team and to get to know you, the readers. I hope, when things settle, that I’ll be able to come back and fill you in on what’s happening — both in my own life, and in the world around us.\u0412<\/p>\n In the meantime, I’ve started a website that focuses on my immigration experiences, along with a couple of side projects. I’ll try to update it as regularly as possible, so if you’d ever like to check in, click here<\/a><\/strong>. I’m also available via email at: asherr (at) tcd.ie. Please stay in touch, I’d love to hear from you.<\/p>\n Onwards and upwards,<\/p>\n Rachel Asher<\/p>\n To see more from contributing photographer Sean Hayes, click here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Friend and Reader: After a year of twists and turns, reporting on the news, astrology and special interests and editing Planet Waves’ editions each day, I’m stepping down as Associate Editor, effective today. As I’ve written here before, my partner of three years is Irish and I’m American. We’ve been trying, without success, to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,52,117,1211],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}