Couple shocked when only ONE of their twin boys is granted US citizenship

Andrew Dvash-Banks is a dual US and Canadian citizen who met his husband Elad while studying in Israel.

At the time of meeting. the same-sex couple couldn't legally get married in either the US or Israel so they moved to Canada and wed in 2010. 

While they were living in Toronto, the couple had twin boys via surrogacy.

Not long after their birth, the Dvash-Banks family went to the American consulate in Toronto to apply for the twins' US citizenship.

However, after they applied, they were shocked to hear that only one of the boys was granted citizenship. 

According to ImmigrationEquality, one boy was conceived using Andrew's sperm and the other using Elad's, and only Andrew's biological son was granted citizenship.  

"Because one son was conceived with the sperm of one father and the other son with the sperm of the other father, one of these fraternal twins is being treated by the U.S. government as a U.S. citizen while the other was forced to enter the U.S. on a tourist visa," the LGBTQ immigrant rights organisation, who are fighting to make sure the twins are treated equally, explained. 

ImmigrationEquality has now filed a complaint on behalf of Andrew and Elad.

"The State Department, through the United States Embassy in Toronto, Canada, however, failed to apply Section 301 to Ethan and Aiden," the complaint reads. 

"Instead, it applied Section 309 of the INA (codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1409), a provision of the statute which applies only to children born “out of wedlock.” Because the State Department wrongly considered Ethan and Aiden to have been born “out of wedlock,” it erroneously concluded that they could qualify for citizenship at birth only pursuant to provisions applicable to the children of unwed parents.

"It then incorrectly determined that the twins could acquire citizenship at birth only pursuant to Section 309 and only if Andrew’s sperm had been used to conceive them both."

You can read the complaint in full here.

Talking about the situation the family now finds themselves in, Andrew said: 

"We came to the United States and moved here but one of our sons entered on a tourist visa and has a tourist status."

Continuing, he explains: "None of it makes sense. It's not right. And we know it's not right."