Thread: Chicago: Gay immigrants fight to join movement

Article gives another viewpoint to issue.


chicagotribune.com
Gay immigrants fight to join movement

By Antonio Olivo

Tribune staff reporter

December 25, 2007

Chicago's immigrant rights movement was on the verge of making history, and Nicole Perez was ready to lend her voice when she was told, with an angry sneer, that she was not welcome.

That was March 10, 2006. Perez and her lesbian partner, Xiomara Santana, had joined more than 100,000 demonstrators in the Loop for a march that kicked off a nationwide struggle for immigrant rights. Holding hands, the U.S.-born women looked at the Latino faces around them and were reminded of their own families.

Then an elderly man 2 feet away cursed at the couple, spitting out: "Why are you here?"

"I was like: 'We're all here for the same reason. This is as much my issue as it is yours,'" Perez, 25, said, recalling her tears of anger as others at the march laughingly trotted away from a gay and lesbian banner nearby for fear of being associated with the group.

Almost two years later, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community is pushing for more recognition in an immigration movement that includes the Catholic Church and others with conservative views about sexual orientation.

Local activists launched a Global Gays Initiative this month to highlight immigration concerns specific to their community and to provide legal aid and other assistance to gays, lesbians and others who have felt ostracized by mainstream immigrant groups.

Those organizations have paid scant attention to immigration battles in the lesbian and gay community, said Tania Unzueta, a Pilsen-based activist who highlights such stories as a host for Radio Arte, an FM station affiliated with the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum.

For instance, barely a word was spoken about the case of Victoria Arellano, a transgender woman with AIDS who arrived illegally from Mexico and died this summer in a detention center in San Pedro, Calif., after she was denied her medication.

"Everybody was so focused on the other Arellano," Unzueta said, referring to Elvira Arellano, the illegal immigrant in Chicago who had been arrested about the same time in Los Angeles after leaving the Humboldt Park church where she avoided deportation for a year.

The Victoria Arellano case highlighted shortcomings in medical treatment available to illegal immigrants awaiting deportation, especially those with HIV, activists said.

The case has also dovetailed with a broader push to overturn a 20-year federal ban on allowing HIV-positive immigrants to enter the U.S. without first proving they're not a public health risk or a burden on government resources.

Jonathan Eoloff, an attorney with the non-profit Heartland Alliance who helps HIV-positive clients seek federal waivers from the ban, said the policy was carved from fear at a time when AIDS was still considered an untreatable disease.

"It's a very draconian, outdated, HIV-phobic policy" that ignores recent medical advancements, Eoloff argued.

Last month, the federal Department of Homeland Security proposed new regulations for HIV-related immigration cases that, among other things, would require foreigners to carry all the anti-retroviral medication they would need during their stay in the U.S. and to prove they have private health insurance accepted in this country for any medical emergencies. Gay and lesbian community activists are fighting to defeat the plan.

But the most widely championed community campaign has been on behalf of an estimated 36,000 same-sex couples in the country where one person is a U.S. citizen and the other an immigrant.

Many such couples are split apart after an immigration visa expires or a deportation occurs, prompting an effort to pass a federal law that would allow a gay or lesbian U.S. citizen to sponsor their partner's application for legal residency. Heterosexual couples have that privilege through marriage.

The legislation, proposed by U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), has had modest support.

With the main argument for immigration reform modeled as an appeal to traditional family values, it may be tricky for mainstream groups to fully champion such battles, gay and lesbian activists acknowledged.

One group, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, has begun early talks with those activists.

"We are learning about the issues in the LGBT community and want to make sure that our immigration laws are humane for those communities and respect their basic human dignity as well," said Joshua Hoyt, the organization's director.

As a sign of how both sides can benefit, Hoyt said, a planned Web-site upgrade by his group has been modeled after that of the 22-year-old Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, a veteran in mobilizing an otherwise hidden population via the Internet.

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aolivo@tribune.com

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I know from a bulletin board in Massachusetts that there are gays on our side as well.