By Matt Simonette

Staff writer

A number of community activists gathered at the Center on Halsted April 30 for a forum discussing issues facing GLBT immigrants to the United States.

These activists, however, sought to open up conversations that went beyond laws facing GLBT partners or the HIV travel ban, for example. Solutions to those issues, they suggested, might eventually be found by agitating for change in the labyrinthine immigration systems that the U.S. currently implements. Attendees also suggested improving the economic opportunities immigrants have here.

“The frames we have used (to discuss these issues) have been warped by a 20-year onslaught from the far right,” said Jessica Acee, a coordinator at the Albany Park Worker’s Center, where she organizes day laborers.

Many day laborers, she said, have had to resort to sex work when they cannot make ends meet. In such situations, Acee said, “What’s easier (for authorities and advocates) to look at is the shame that that person experiences,” instead of the economic conditions and abuses that put that person into that position in the first place.

Day laborers are repeatedly subjected to a number of abuses—employers frequently refuse to pay them, for example, and they often endure police harassment, according to Acee.

Shira Hassan, of Young Women’s Empowerment Project, which assists young people involved in sex trades, said the term “trafficking,” so prominently used in government parlance, has inherently complicated her agency’s work.

“We don’t even use it in our office anymore,” she added.

In the government’s eyes these days, any remote connection with the sex trade can often lead to charges of “trafficking,” according to Hassan. She cited the case of a disabled man who was hired by one of her clients to be a driver and was arrested for trafficking.

“This guy is now in lockup,” Hassan said.

She added that the government has done very little to address the conditions that brought her clients into the sex trade in the first place.

“The girls have experienced harm after harm after harm,” Hassan said.

YWEP operates under a “transformative justice” framework, finding alternative solutions to their clients’ needs apart from the law.

“Girls in the sex trade are outside of the law to begin with,” Hassan said.

As such, they often find external means to their housing and health care, she said.

Many at the forum said government agencies need to step down from their primary preoccupation with how immigrants are entering the country.

Such agencies are “not being expansive or holistic enough,” said Anjelica Jiminez of Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women’s network.

“Different (government) entities need to be speaking to each other,” she added.

Jiminez said a number of immigrants have been reluctant to step forward with legal grievances, for fear of jeopardizing their immigration status if they do not cooperate in investigations to police or prosecutor’s satisfaction. Very often, she said, that leaves them at the mercy of an abusive spouse or partner.

“What they’re looking for are ‘good victims,’” Jiminez added. “We have cases where we’re putting women right back in (abusive) situations and where women are not coming forward. We have women that are dying daily, that have gone through the system.”

“Often the term ‘queer’ becomes an exclusionary category,” said activist Yasmin Nair, who helped organize the forum.

Nair said an activist agenda that more widely addressed socio-economic conditions facing the whole community might ultimately do more to address the needs of GLBT immigrants than focusing on reversing the HIV travel ban or allowing same-sex partner immigration, for example, which is where many GLBT rights activists have focused their attention.

“If we think in terms of labor and inequality, it becomes so much more enabling than just saying, ‘Lift the ban,’” she said. Ultimately, Nair asked, “What happens to (members of these communities) when they do get documentation?”

“Let’s formulate on issues that go beyond family or partnership,” she added.