Thread: Bill Proposes Immigration Rights for Gay Couples

We have problems with sham marriages, this would just be adding to it. How do you detect a sham relationship? Really, that house with 20 day labors living in it whose occupants will become couples but they have women over on the weekends. This is just another loophole.

By JULIA PRESTON
Published: June 2, 2009

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Democrat from Vermont who is the powerful chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is adding another controversial ingredient to the volatile mix of an immigration debate that President Obama has said he hopes to spur in Congress before the end of the year.

Mr. Leahy has offered a bill that would allow American citizens and legal immigrants to seek residency in the United States for their same-sex partners, just as spouses now petition for foreign-born husbands and wives.

The senator has said the bill should be part of any broad immigration legislation that Congress considers. To highlight his initiative, known as the Uniting American Families Act, Mr. Leahy is holding a hearing on Wednesday to discuss it in the full Judiciary Committee, bypassing the usual subcommittee hearings.

Also this week, immigrant advocacy groups and labor organizations are opening a nationwide campaign to hold President Obama to his recent pledge to initiate a Congressional debate on immigration legislation later this year.

Small-scale rallies took place on Monday in Los Angeles and some 40 other locations, and immigration groups are converging on Washington on Wednesday for three days of strategy meetings.

The Obama administration, juggling an array of huge and pressing issues on the economy and health care reform, has encouraged the mobilization of immigration advocates, especially Latino groups, while avoiding any legislative battles for now on the prickly topic of immigration. President Obama has invited a bipartisan group of lawmakers to the White House next Monday to “launch a policy conversationâ€

IMO ALL immigration should be halted for at least 10 years so that people who are here legally can assimilate.