Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have proposed a plan that one UK commenter calls “as popular as genital herpes,” though you should note that “popularity” is not the same as “ubiquity.” It’s called Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment (or “BELIEVE”) and requires every American citizen to carry a “biometric ID card” with thumbprint information in order to get a job. It’s expensive, alarming, and would do nothing to address our actual immigration problems, but it does have some sugar sprinkles for gays with foreign partners—it would allow “gay [Americans] to sponsor their partners for citizenship.” But winning over 10 percent of the US population won’t convince the other 90 percent to enjoy eating a poo sandwich.
STRANGERS w/ CANDY
The Democrats’ Shitty Immigration Proposal Comes With Gay Candy
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Cam
To all the people who say that we need to sit back and stop nagging the Democrats because they are our friends and will look out for us….I would like to say that before the marches, the arrests, the sit ins etc… this bill would have come out WITHOUT any provisions for gays. Whether or not you like the bill, you have to admit that in something as controversial as an immigration bill they would have NEVER bothered to put anything in there about gays before we started getting loud. They wouldn’t have wanted to “Upset” republicans.
Adam
The staff at Queerty should go back to coming up with trashy “blind items” rather than blithely passing judgment on matters that are beyond their depth of understanding.
Lanjier
He is building a winning midterm coalition of latinos and independents who respect him for putting off our civil rights, and whom he thinks would be angered if he stopped throwning vets to the curb.
He believes so many gays already will go to the polls for Democrats because they always have in the past, that he does not need voters like many on Queerty.
It was always the plan. The rest has been pouring wine for the palace courtiers.
Geo Metrosexual
This seems to be a clear message from the Dems, to the homosexual community, that their commitment to gay equality is nil. This bill will almost certainly flop, even after the opposition demands the gay equality parts be stripped out. The Dems will then table the gay equality language, repeatedly patting themselves on the back afterwards for having brought it up at all, and consider the matter ended. Politicians do this all the time with bills which they want to kill, without offending the interested parties.
Rachel Tiven
This isn’t accurate, and there’s more to the story than what appears in this post. While we at Immigration Equality are extremely satisfied that the Democrats’ immigration framework includes LGBT families, there are many other positive things in it for everyone.
First of all, it provides a path to citizenship for the millions of straight and queer undocumented people currently stuck in permanent limbo. Second, it reduces the excruciating wait times that straight and queer people face when sponsoring their parents, children, and siblings. Third, it includes the DREAM Act, a no-brainer bill that allows college-bound high school graduates who were brought to the US as children to become citizens. Many of the heroic young people leading the DREAM Act campaign are queer, and they’d be awfully surprised to hear that there isn’t anything good about this proposal for them.
Is the proposal perfect? Far from it. The emphasis on enforcement will result in more people being detained in immigration jail – where no one has a right to counsel and LGBT people are uniquely vulnerable – and the proposal does not include desperately needed guarantees of due process throughout the system. However, it is a reasonable proposal for moving forward, and as the Arizona debacle demonstrates, immigrant families simply can’t wait any longer. – Rachel Tiven, Immigration Equality
InExile
This bill is great although as usual anything good for America, Obama takes off the table. Obama took immigration off the table the day after it was announced gays were included. Why does Obama hate gays so much? What did we do other than support him?
ewe
I have never liked Chuck Schumer. There is something i simply do not trust about him. Everytime i look or hear him, he makes my skin crawl. I truly believe he is disingenuous.