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Same-Sex Couples and Immigration

It's not entirely surprising, but Human Rights Watch points out in a new report that current immigration law discriminates rather seriously against gays and lesbians. There are at least 40,000 same-sex couples in the United States in which one partner is a citizen or permanent resident and the other a foreign national. But in those relationships, the U.S. citizen isn't allowed to sponsor his or her partner for entry into the country in the way that virtually all heterosexual couples can:

For more than 50 years, family reunification has been a stated and central goal of U.S. immigration policy. Immigration law places a priority on allowing citizens and permanent residents to sponsor their spouses and close relatives for entry into the U.S. Although the system remains imperfect, riddled with delays that rising anti-immigrant sentiment only intensifies, U.S. citizens and their foreign heterosexual partners can easily claim spousal status and the immigration rights that it brings.

U.S. citizens with foreign lesbian or gay partners, however, find that their relationship is considered non-existent under federal law. … Based on interviews and surveys with dozens of binational same-sex couples across the United States and around the world, the report documents the pressures and ordeals that lack of legal recognition imposes on lesbian and gay families. Couples described abuse and harassment by immigration officials. Some partners told stories of being deported from the United States and separated from their partners. Many couples, forced to live in different countries or continents, endure financial as well as emotional strain in keeping their relationships together.

A number of transnational same-sex couples end up in exile in one the 19 countries that actually allow same-sex couples to immigrate. Interestingly—or depressingly; take your pick—the report notes that a good deal of immigration policy in the United States has been motivated by fears of sexuality for quite some time. Up until 1990, the U.S. barred foreign-born gays and lesbians from entering the country, a policy that started in the McCarthy era. It still imposes a ban on H.I.V.-positive individuals from entering the country—one of the only industrialized countries to do so—despite the fact that there's not really a compelling public health reason to do so. And now this, which, sadly, isn't likely to be corrected anytime soon.

Posted by Bradford Plumer on 05/02/06 at 11:03 AM | E-mail | Print | Digg this | de.licio.us

Comments

with all the funding being yanked away from social service programs--especially foster homes, you'd think any half-decent person without a criminal record would be welcomed as a foster parent.
I grew up in foster homes--foster parents who did it for income.
I would have been better off in a home with people who wanted to be parents-no matter what their gender, or sexual orientation.
If you want to get moral and legal about it, most of the people who molest children present themselves as straight, upstanding members of society.
Obviously, that isn't the case.
Yes or no, if you are against sex education and birth control, you voted that way. Probably vote against abortion.
Who's going to take care of all those kids that come from those unions? Not the same people who adopt from China or Guatamala. There are plenty of kids in the US that need homes--but they don't match the fashionable skin color this year.
Who's going to take care of those kids? If gays are out, single parents are out, vegetarians and suspected aetheists are out, are those kids suposed to languish in group homes and shelters instead of going to a person or people who will love them?
Is it any of your business who they sleep with, or worship (or not) as long as they are good parents?
Apply those standards to everyone you know. Do they "deserve" to have children?
How many "straight" people with money (and lousy morals) adopt kids?
Gay isn't contagious. My best friends are gay. I'm not gay, my kids aren't gay---but they aren't judgemental.
If either of my kids turned out to be gay, that would be the least of my problems. They are both smart, think for themselves, they are good kids, better company and conversationalists than most adults I know.
I would be sad only because it would make their lives a little harder, because people are jerks, and threatened by the least little thing that is different. My little girl is vegan. People freak out about that.
What's wrong with that?
What's wrong with having a parent that loves you for what you are, not who they wish you were , or who they could mold you into, and is understanding when you feel like an outcast, an outsider?
Who better to understand a kid who feels like a stray? You want to bitch about taxpayers' money going to support all the unwanted kids that you voted for (making birth control expensive or inaccessible), and won't vote to protect them once they're outside the womb, don't wan't to use "your hard earned tax-paying dollars" to support them, why won't you give them to somebody who wants them?
What's the problem???

Posted by: heather on 05/05/06 at 12:47 AM

Your story cites hetrosexual "spouces" and homosexual "partners". The discrimination is not in the immigration laws as it seems to treat unmarried couples the same whether hetro or homo. The discrimination is in the marriage laws which don't allow homo couples to marry thereby precluding them from the opportunity to sponsor immigrants.

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