Jul 31, 2009  |  By: Julie Kruse  | COMMENTS     

THERE’S A BATTLE looming for LGBT families that we can win now — a battle to keep lesbians and gays from literally being torn from our same-sex partners. Discriminatory immigration laws are causing LGBT families needless suffering.

In April, Shirley Tan of Pacifica, Calif., as reported in a recent People magazine article, was facing deportation and forced separation from her partner Jaylynn, who is a U.S. citizen, and their two U.S. citizen children. Just days before her scheduled deportation, Sen. Diane Feinstein introduced a private bill on her behalf, which effectively delays the deportation for almost two years.

Gordon Stewart has moved to England to stay with his life partner Renato. Because of being abroad, he was not able to spend the time caring for a sister sick with cancer, as he had hoped to do.

Judy Rickard retired early to be with her partner, Karen, and move abroad, if necessary, to keep their family together. 

In short, the 36,000 bi-national lesbian, gay  and bisexual families in the U.S. face acute crises every day because discriminatory immigration laws prevent them from sponsoring their same-sex partners for residency in the U.S. 

Finally, after years of struggle to fix this injustice, we have a shot at winning this fight, but it will require our community to take action.

CONGRESS AND THE White House are committed to moving forward with comprehensive immigration reform. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), chair of the subcommittee charged with overseeing immigration, recently said that he will have a bill ready for consideration by Labor Day. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has promised, once the Senate votes on its version, to bring a similar measure to a vote in her chamber, too. 

The White House held a summit in June and formed an immigration working group to help move comprehensive immigration reform legislation forward. And President Obama has said he supports our inclusion in the bill.

Now, the LGBT community is at a significant tipping point to ensure inclusion of our families in this legislation. 

In June, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, held the first-ever hearing on the issue of lesbian, gay and bisexual bi-national couples. Leahy, along with Schumer, has expressed strong support for including those couples and the Uniting American Families Act — a bill to treat all couples, straight or gay, equally under U.S. immigration law — in the larger comprehensive immigration reform bill. 

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) also said, in a recent statement to Immigration Equality, that, “One of the cruelest aspects of American immigration policy is the separation it imposes on people who love each other, but happen to be from different countries. … I am a supporter of comprehensive reform and believe that any comprehensive immigration reform package must include UAFA, too.”

Including our families in comprehensive immigration reform, if successful, will not only be a watershed moment for couples impacted directly by discriminatory immigration policies. It also will be an important accomplishment for the community as a whole. If LGBT voters bring new support to a large, comprehensive bill, we also bring credibility to other fights that impact our families, too. That’s why it is so important that our community support comprehensive immigration reform and urge Congress to pass an inclusive reform package that benefits us.

Comprehensive immigration reform will not be easy. Previous attempts to pass such legislation have failed. But, if LGBT voters can bring our champions to the table in support of an inclusive bill this time, we have a chance of making a real difference not just for our families, but for every family suffering under the current immigration system.

There is a real opportunity, right now, to score a legislative victory. Doing so will require enthusiastic support from each of us, and calls to our lawmakers insisting that no reform is truly comprehensive unless it includes our families, too. That, in turn, creates momentum for equality that our entire community, regardless of whether or not we are part of a bi-national couple, can benefit from.