Why Should LGBTQ People be Concerned with The Immigrant Question?

As we hear of more raids on the immigrant communities in Hartford members of Queers Without Borders are outraged. We ask ourselves what can we do to help put and end to these raids, to this trampling of human rights, and to this injustice in our midst. While we fully realized that not all LGBT people are concerned with these raids and the performance of Nazi like tactics by member of Immigration and Custom Enforcement, (ICE) we at QWB stand out and open against ICE and work with other progressive communities to shut ICE down.

“We Refuse To Be Good Germans” *

The LGBT community does not have to look very far back in our history to find horror stories about persecution of our people , our people marked and our people carried away. This removal from our everyday, branded and sent to concentration camps, is a well know part of our collective history. All the while this injustice was happening  there was a silence surrounding the removal of the homosexual population from German cities. A silence much like the silence of today that surrounds the removal of immigrants from their homes and imprisoning them, heaven knows where and then deporting them. Many of these deportees face persecution back in their countries and certainly face extreme poverty. The persecution of our people in Nazi Germany began in early 1933 by the banning of all gay clubs, the banning of all sex publication, and the shutting down of all “rights organizations. ” In May of 1933 Nazi youth made an organized attack on the Institute of Sexual Research and the library and archives were burned in the street. At this time extensive lists of the names and addresses of LGBt people were seized and turned over to the police. The raids began and people were removed. The silence was deafening. “When they came for the homosexual I said nothing, because I was not a homosexual.” The removing from society those that were deemed to be unfit and unwanted. The us and them. The good and the bad. The Others. By the silence of a nation hatered was allowed to grow swallowing up millions in the holocaust. (1)

*(The good Germans  were the citizens of Nazi Germany who, after 1945 claimed not to have supported the regime, even if they made no effort to oppose it. Today the term has been given a broader application, one which refers to people in any country who observe reprehensible things, being done by their government but nevertheless remain silent and do not challenge or impede them.)

WANT THE CHILLS? ICE HAS THEM.

Jerimarie one of our blog contributors and one of the founding members of Queers Without Borders posted a chilling post on November 3, 2007. Scroll down and read it. The post, “ICE’s Endgame is in play” will scare the warmest heart to freeze. Endgame’s title and subtitle should be enough for even the coldest heart to get a real chill down their spine. “Endgame” Office of Detention and Removal Strategic Plan, 203-2012, DHS’s ICE Bureau. This plan is subtitled: “Detention and Removal Strategy for a Secure Homeland.” One doesn’t even need to know our history to conjure up images of a government gone mad and people persecuted. This endgame is a plan to remove all 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States by the year 2012. As Jeri writes, “Endgame is a plan eerily similar, in name and form, to the early stages of Hitler’s Final Solution, mass raids, detention, deportation and the constant denial of human and civil rights for a population largely identified by race, spoken language and culture.”

THE LGBTQ QUESTION.

Up until 1991 homosexuality was a ground for exclusion from admission to the U.S. Under section 212 (a) (4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. This law provided for exclusion of our people as ”sexual deviants”. (2)  If one of our sisters or brothers were an immigrant and became a victim of entrapment and exposed the person would be deported. No matter what fate met them in their homeland. Today many LGBT people around the world are really refugees fleeing persecution on the basis of sexual orientation, from their country of origin. In many countries, men and women are routinely subjected to brutalizing abuse. In some countries the death penalty is imposed on those whose sexual orientation is discovered. One only has to read the recent posting on QWB, “I Was Forced to Flee Iran,” written by Arsham Parsi a first person account of what our people face in Iran. In a report released in 1998 the killing of gays in Guatemala was described as “social cleansing.” (3)  In 1994 gays and lesbians qualified as a particular social group for the purpose of U.S. asylum if one could prove that they were victims of persecution in their homeland. Today many of our people are faced with deportation because of the absence of legal recognition of LGBT relationships. LGBT people with HIV face another area of discrimination. This policy is seen by many to be motivated by both racism and homophobia.  A waver for some would-be-immigrants allows person’s with HIV to immigrate to the U.S. if they have a qualifying relationship: U.S. citizen or permanent resident spouse, parent or child, and then and only then if the applicant can prove they are not likely to become a public charge. Our people once again would be excluded for we would be least likely to have such a qualifying relationships. The U.S. does not consider a same-sex partner of a U.S. citizen to be a qualifying relationship.  Nor are any laws that apply to heterosexual couples valid for our people. A case in point would be all though it is legal to marry in Massachusetts the Defense of Marriage Act would prohibit any protection for a married couple from Massachusetts. No immigrant could become a citizen through marriage. So we see that there would be no protections for our people and deportation hangs over their heads. 

The Transgender community fares no better. In fact a big slap in the face has been heard through out this community as they find that their marriages are not honored by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Take the case of Jiffy Javellana and wife Donita Ganzon. Ganzon, a male to female transsexual who has completed sex-reassignment surgery in 1981, and became a U.S. citizen in 1987. The Federal Government refused to issue Javellana a green card despite his 2001 marriage to Ganzon. The government cited the Defense of Marriage Act and now Javellana faces possible deportation. Want to read more about what one of our sisters faced? Scroll down our blog to Peter’s posting, “Death of Trans Immigrant in detention forges united protests.” Read all about Victoria Arrelano, a Mexican Trans-person with AIDS who died in an ICE Detention facility in L.A due to the “outright medical neglect and a callous indifference by the prison authorities.” And read about her fellow prisoners who came to her aid, read about the caring of these men determined to help, determined to make Victoria comfortable. (4) 

‘TRUST ME, WE ALWAYS LIVE IN FEAR” 

A large number of LGBT people who are crossing the border from Mexico are in search of a better life and a place where they can be who they are. After watching a video of that journey I can only say welcome.  (Worldwide, workers from poorer countries migrate to industrialized countries in search of jobs. They often do so illegally because there is no legal way. Each year the U.S. gives out only 5,000 occupationally based permanent resident visas or green cards to  people who would be  considered workers in the service industry.) (5)  According to many LGBT immigrants they come not only for the jobs but to escape persecution. From stories that are told more times than not they feel left out of the mainstream immigrant rights community. Most of the immigrant rights organizations are not taking up the issues that face the LGBT community and many LGBT immigrants are taking a wait and see attitude being too afraid of deportation and persecution back in their home countries. Our job then would be to continue pressing the mainstream LGBT organizations to take on the issue of immigrant rights and join with the immigrant rights communities to pass legislation that will benefit all immigrants. (Hey, Love Makes A Family, prick up your ears!) According to the Gay and Lesbian Task Force there are at least 500,000 of the estimated 12 million undocumented persons now in this country who are GLBT. Many of our sisters and brothers who are undocumented are in partnered relationships and the new immigration bills would make it a crime to “harbor” your partner. (6)  So fear is the new name that couples must live by. What it must be like to live each day in fear that ICE may stop you on the street or come to your door. That old “knock on the door” My friend Sandra who lives on Dorothy Street here in Hartford told me of such a knock. First they came to her door and knocked hard. So hard she was afraid they were going to break down her door. When she opened they looked at her and said , “Oh the wrong one, you’re not Spanish you’re black.” They went across the hall to a door and knocked there. Sandra watched out the peep hole. A women opened the door and they went in. Saying something about where is______? They came to a locked bedroom door and knocked and then broke it in. The man inside the room punched a plain clothes cop, and then all hell broke loose. The cop and other cops fought the guy out the door of the apartment and the guy and cop tumbled down the stairs and out the front door. A few points to finish this story. The man was the wrong man. He was an undocumented worker from Brazil. The people that were living in the apt. where told to move out. The man is in the hospital because of the beating the cops gave him.

UNITY OF THE EXPLOITED AND THE OPPRESSED.

LGBT people are a minority in the United States. When our so called civilized society targets, demonizes, dehumanizes and scapegoats any minority group-whether it be people of color, poor people, single mothers, immigrants or us-blaming the minority for economic and social problems, it creates an enviroment and pattern that threatens our safety. To join with other communities in a fight for immigrant rights is an issue of simple humanity. It is right. Our people know what it is like to be the “other” the outcast and singled out for persecution. In another posting on our blog Peter wrote about racial profiling.  In his piece, “Comments from the NLG Convention, Part 2″ he speaks about ”puzzling over how to begin discussion promoting common ground between the immigrant community and the African American community.” Peter then goes on to speak of the connection between the two—racial profiling. Another simple connection that can connect all of us in the working class is the things that immigrants want and need, living wages, health care, shelter, civil liberties, education, childcare, freedom from want and the right to enjoy life, culture and leisure time is what all of us workers want. This is a working class issue. This is a Queer Issue. This is a Human Issue. This is our everyday issue. 

Reference:

1.  One Day They Were Simply Gone: The Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals, Richter Norton

2. Challenging Discrimination Against Gay and Lesbians in U.S. Immigration Law, Lavi S. Soloway, Immigration Equality, NY

3. The Advocate, “We Too Are Immigrants”, June 6, 2006

4. Death of A Trans Immigrant in Detention Forges Protest, Leslie Feinberg, Workers World, Sept. 8, 2007. See also QWB blog piece.

5. Political Affairs, June 2006 No One Is Illegal, The Fight For Immigrant Rights.

6. Si Se Puede! Immigration is and needs to be a gay issue. Matt Foreman National Lesbian and Gay Task Force.

Tonight 11/9 while viewing around I found some photo’s  of the vigil for Victoria Arellano please see. http://la.indymedia.org/news/2007/08/205928.php