By Matt Simonette

Staff writer

Chicago LGBTQ Immigration Alliance and Center on Halsted hosted a town hall meeting Dec. 13 for the GLBT community to voice concerns about immigrant rights in the face of the current political situation.

Panelists included Jonathan Eoloff of the National Immigrant Justice Center; activist Patrick Livingston; attorney Caitlin Daniel-McCarter; Tania Unzuta of National Museum of Mexican Art; and activist Yasmin Nair.

Eoloff, who coordinates attorneys for GLBT and HIV-positive immigrants, began by speaking about the lengths they must go to in order to seek asylum in this country.

Currently, an individual can be granted asylum if they are present in the U.S. and meet the definition of a refugee. Sexual orientation can be the basis of an asylum request if the applicant can show that harm would come to them if they were to return to their home country.

The bar is set considerably higher for HIV-positive individuals. Eoloff said that for those HIV-positive men and women who cannot show that they face government animus, “the U.S. has sent a clear message out to those individuals—keep out of the U.S.,” Eoloff said.

“It’s a very draconian law that’s actually part of an immigration statute, and it’s the only medical ground that’s written in an immigration statute,” he added.

Livingston further described problems faced by bi-national GLBT couples, who have no legal framework they can fall back on. Federal law does not allow for one member of a bi-national GLBT couple to sponsor their partner for immigration purposes.

He described how his own relationship was disrupted when his partner had to return to Brazil after losing his job. He acknowledged that many couples in similar situations would have chosen to split up, but he and his partner decided not to.

“(That) would really be allowing the government to dictate who we choose to love and who we would be in a relationship with,” Livingston said.

Daniel-McCarter described a number of surveillance plans by the federal government, among them Real ID, a national identity card system, and “No Match” letters the Social Security Administration has been sending to employers.

Real IDs, according to Daniel-McCarter, would be inscribed with a tremendous amount of personal information, including birth records, which will be accessible by anyone who can scan the cards.

The card especially “presents a significant barrier for trans people,” Daniel-McCarter said. Their birth gender and other sensitive information would be contained on the card, ensuring that they would be outed.

Similar situations can arise because of No Match letters. The letters are supposed to be sent to employers only when SSA notes discrepancies in their records, but employers have used the letters as the basis for termination for their immigrant employees. Since transgenders frequently have files that seem inconsistent, they are especially at risk, according to Daniel-McCarter.

Nair said the immigrant GLBT community needs to commit more to intensive political action that conveys to policymakers the force of both their numbers and their willpower.

“We don’t politicize politics anymore,” Nair said, adding that rights organizations very often soften their messages by expecting individual “stories” from immigrant communities to convey the stakes of their struggles.

“Good stories make for good news, but they don’t make for good politics,” she said. “Stories are easy, politics are really hard.”

The forum served as the launch of the Global Gays Initiative, a collective of organizations that aims to provide activities and support systems for the immigrant LGBTQ community, according to C.C. Carter, director of community and cultural programs at the Center.