Today, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano is announcing that the United States government will stop deporting younger undocumented people who entered the United States when they were children. The new policy is based on some of the goals of the DREAM Act, though the executive branch is unable to implement the full act. Congress has authority over who is entitled to a path to citizenship, so eventually, the DREAM Act will need to be passed. When this policy is implemented, these immigrants will no longer live under threat of deportation “if they were brought to the United States before they turned 16 and are younger than 30, have been in the country for at least five continuous years, have no criminal history, graduated from a U.S. high school or earned a GED, or served in the military.”
This is an enormous first step, that, according to the Associated Press, “will affect as many as 800,000 immigrants who have lived in fear of deportation.” President Obama is addressing the new policy later today.
During the fight to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the military, the LGBT community gained some important allies in the DREAM activists – the undocumented students and workers attempting to remain in the country and gain a path to citizenship through the Act. The DREAM Act and repeal of DADT were both coming up in Congress at the same time and the two groups were united, helping to rally support for both bills. Some suggestions were made that spending time trying to pass one bill would hurt the other bill’s chances, and at the time, Immigration Equality wrote:
“We’re smarter than falling for a ‘it’s either one or the other’ argument,” Heather Cronk, managing director of GetEqual, said.
Over the past two months, Cronk has worked side by side with immigration activists to draft protest strategy and letters to Congress.
But her group, which favors repealing the military’s ban on openly gay Americans, has also received pushback from gay-rights activists who believe the two issues should be treated separately.
“There have been folks in the LGBT community saying don’t work with DREAM activists because it will tear down our chances. We pushed back because it’s not okay to leave people behind,” she said.
The alliance came about partly because several prominent students in the immigration fight are homosexual. The two groups also share an affinity for civil disobedience.
As in any activist community on virtually every issue, part of the community of DREAM activists is LGBT, and many of them have come out as both LGBT and as an undocumented person living in the United States. If it’s hard coming out as gay, it’s even more difficult coming out as being a part of both communities:
You see, a lot of the young people at the forefront of this movement also happen to be gay.
Not only are these students proud to scream, “Undocumented and unafraid,” but some have challenged the status quo even further by coming out as queer, undocumented and unafraid.
From 2010’s Trail of Dreams, where three undocumented youth and a legal U.S. resident walked from Miami, Fla. to Washington, D.C., to the first-ever civil disobedience at the Tucson, Ariz. office of Sen. John McCain, undocumented gay activists have been key movers and shakers in actions that aim to bring attention to the DREAM Act.
At times, they risk death and deportation.
This was the case when Mohammad Abdollahi, who, along with undocumented students Yahaira Carrillo, Tania Unzueta, Lizbeth Mateo and legal U.S. resident Raul Alcaraz, participated in the Tucson action.
Abdollahi, an undocumented gay student from Iran, risked deportation to a country where homosexuality is punished with death. Undocumented queer activists Carrillo and Unzueta sat next to Abdollahi, and all three contemplated the possibility of being deported to countries they barely remembered.
Because we have shared goals of equality and coalition building, and because there are LGBT people in both camps, it’s a natural alliance:
Urvashi Vaid, the lesbian activist who once headed the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force, has often made that point about the need to show up at each other’s causes. She said race in the LGBT movement is seen “primarily as an issue of diversity or outreach, not as an issue of equity or fundamental justice that it is our business as a movement to achieve.” One person’s cause has really become another person’s outreach. Let’s get a person of color for our board. How about a gay person for our board?
After today’s announcement, Immigration Equality released a statement, pushing the administration to make further advancements in keeping LGBT families together:
Today’s announcement is great news for our country. The young people who will be positively impacted are our classmates, our colleagues, our friends. They are America’s up-and-comers: future entrepreneurs, scientists, and public servants. I can’t wait to see their vibrant potential realized.
Some DREAM-eligible young people – including many of the bravest leaders of the movement – are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. Many, gay and straight, are building their lives with Americans whom they love. This new policy will ensure these young people, many of whom have never known any home other than the United States, do not live in fear of separation from their family. Indeed, no person should face forcible separation from their families, regardless of their age. That is why the White House should follow today’s announcement with a proposal to extend that same relief to immigrants with U.S.-citizen partners and spouses across the board. Keeping families together is good policy, and all families, including those that are LGBT, should have the support of the President in the form of a similar policy.”
The announcement also comes on the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Plyler v. Doe, striking down an attempt by Texas to withhold education funds for children who are in the country without documentation. The Court held that the action violates the 14th Amendment, writing that, “no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.”
There is still a lot left to be done to fulfill this principle, but this is a bold step.
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