| We haven't even come close to seeing the last mushroom cloud of the healthcare debate, but already the next big fight is shaping upon the horizon... and our own Chuck Schumer is right in the middle of it.
Schumer has announced his intention to introduce a comprehensive immigration reform bill by the coming Labor Day. That means that to have serious public input on the first phase of the bill's shaping, pressure has to start now.
Right now--as in, I'm typing while ignoring the crowd--I'm in the middle of a conference in Pittsburgh ahead of Netroots Nation talking about the intersection of immigration and LGBT issues. Strange bedfellows, right? Not exactly, because there's a very large exception created by the current laws.
An American citizen whose mate is a non-citizen can sponsor that person for citizenship--if they get married. Gay people still can't get married in most states, and even if they live somewhere that they can, the federal government doesn't recognize that fact.
There are already two bills in progress to fix this problem. One is the Uniting American Families Act, which simply extends current sponsorship laws to "permanent partners," which means gay relationships as well as common-law type heterosexual partners. The other is the Reuniting Families Act, which is an LGBT-inclusive comprehensive immigration reform bill.
However, both of these bills are likely to get steamrolled if a major CIR bill is introduced by Schumer and company. That means that in order to help out the estimated 30 to 40 thousand bi-national LGBT couples in the US--as well as the 15 to 18 thousand of them who have children who are under threat of having their families broken up--then we need to start contacting Chuck Schumer right now to get the UAFA integrated into the new bill. |
