My Big Fat Gay Immigration Conversations

by adminwp in Ruth Hackford-Peer | 0 comments

I had two conversations recently that sparked this column. First, someone asked why I so adamantly believe that gay folks should be more involved in immigrant rights. Second, I spoke to someone awhile ago who blamed the current economic crisis—including the bank and credit freeze and the housing slump—on undocumented immigrants. Both conversations were important enough for me to write about here.

So why do I think gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender folks ought to be more involved in the current local and national discourse on immigration? My first — and the easiest  —answer is that, like anyone else, queer people come to the U.S. from all over the world, which means immigration issues effect us too, and often in very complex ways.

What ways? Well, immigration laws are clearly heterosexist. The U.S. lesbian who falls in love with a German student on an F-1 VISA can tell you how impossible it is for them to remain together legally after graduation. The heterosexual couple in the same position can utilize the institution of marriage to manage to stay together. There are also gay and transgender immigrants in the U.S. who fear for their safety should they have to return to their native countries. Although gay and transgender individuals have been granted asylum here in the past, the process is lengthy and expensive. For some, staying in the United States, even illegally, is far better than facing the very real possibility of anti-gay violence in their home countries.

So, there are gay and transgender Immigrants, some documented, some not. But we shouldn’t care about immigration only because they directly affect gay people. Doing that is a cop out on an issue where I, and many of you reading this, hold privilege.

Queer folks ought to be more involved in the current local and national discourse on immigration because we know what it’s like to be scapegoated. Because we know what it’s like to exist in the margins. Because we know what it’s like to be stereotyped. Because all oppressions is interconnected. Because the power of love is more important than the love of power (thank you, Jimi Hendrix). And mainly because, except for the younger generation of queer folks just coming out, queer folks in the United States know what it means to be illegal.

The main anti-immigrant argument I often hear is that it’s illegal for immigrants to be in the United States while undocumented. Strangely this often translates to some people as: Therefore, the most vulnerable of us do not deserve protection. Or: Therefore, undocumented immigrants are bad people. Or, worse: Therefore, we must protect our children from “those people.”

This sounds too familiar for me to buy. Not so long ago, state and federal governments used sodomy laws to justify discrimination against queer folks. Because gay sex was illegal under those laws, governments could (at least theoretically) harass and even jail queer people. And whenever the issue of gay civil rights came up, inevitably there’d be someone (like our own Gayle Ruzicka when Weber State set up the Matthew Shepard scholarship) trying to shout it down on the grounds that gays were criminals.

These are parallels that I think deserve attention.

Each of us should be able to look at the bigger picture: At the laws themselves; at the economic system that supports—indeed depends—on undocumented immigrants; at the companies that benefit from these immigrants’ labor; at the history of unpaid and underpaid work in this country.

And, most importantly, we should look at who benefits from the work, from the fear, from the marginalization of immigrants in a country that was founded by immigrants.

Pause and reflect on this.

Our most intimate moments with our sexual partners were not so long ago illegal.
I was once an “illegal queer.” I committed misdemeanors and even felonies in multiple states. I didn’t steal, didn’t do drugs, I didn’t even go over the speed limit while driving, but I was a self-proclaimed lesbian. An unrepentant homosexual. A law-breaker. Legally I was once a sexual criminal in the same way that a child molester is a sexual criminal.

Just as sodomy laws dehumanized gay and transgender people and therefore justified societal discrimination against us, so do anti-immigration laws target and dehumanize immigrants. Sodomy laws are now a thing of the past, and since the decriminalization of homosexuality, queer folks have made other huge gains in civil rights. Now we have brothers and sisters criminalized and dehumanized because of their immigration status and so many of us are sitting on the sidelines. Where are the allies?

And briefly, regarding the second conversation I mentioned at the start of this column: Let’s all be honest. The current crisis was not spurred by illegal immigration but rampant unchecked greed and capitalism facilitated by the (so-called) best and brightest on Wall Street. I have no doubt I could have run one of these international corporations as poorly as some of these grossly overpaid executives, only I would have done it on a fraction of the cost.

Put the blame where it belongs and leave immigrants out of it.