LGBT and Civil Rights Groups: Don't Exclude LGBT Immigrants From Affirmative Relief

Lambda Legal joined other LGBT and civil rights organizations to strongly urge President Obama not to exclude long-resident LGBT individuals from the forthcoming program of administrative relief to protect from deportation some of the nation’s population. 

Last week, media outlets reported that a program was under consideration of relief for upwards of 5 million undocumented individuals — but only for those with children who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. This approach would disproportionately exclude the 267,000 undocumented LGBT individuals who have significantly lower rates of parenthood and higher rates of victimization in our nation’s immigration enforcement system. 

While family protection is plainly within any Administration’s broad authority to exercise discretion in immigration enforcement, so is recognition of the inherent discrimination in a legal system that only recently began to recognize the legitimate family connections forged within the LGBT community. The law continues to prevent most LGBT undocumented persons from adopting children, but these immigrants have still developed deep and enduring family connections through long, peaceful residence in the United States.

The organizations below call upon the President to include length of residency as an alternative stand-alone mechanism to provide administrative relief for long-resident undocumented persons as a means of ensuring that anti-LGBT discrimination is not further perpetuated in our legal system.  LGBT individuals must not be penalized simply because they lack formal familial relationships to qualifying relatives.

Francisco Dueñas, Lambda Legal's Director of Diversity, Inclusion and Proyecto Igualdad, says:

Lambda Legal joins with our sister organizations in commending the Administration’s efforts to enact meaningful and compassionate immigration reform. We call on the Administration to ensure that compassion extends to LGBT immigrants. Requiring people to have qualifying relatives, such as children or spouses, unfairly excludes undocumented LGBT individuals who are single or those who reside in states that do not recognize marriage for same-sex couples or that enacted formal or informal barriers to LGBT adoption. 

We urge the Administration to use its executive authority to use its executive powers to provide deportation relief for immigrants who have built lives here whose familial ties may not be recognized, but whose long-standing ties to their communities are clear and well-established.  The thousands of LGBT immigrants living in this country cannot afford to wait any longer for humane immigration reform.

Other organizations that also signed the letter to President Obama include: Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Immigration Equality, Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the National Latino GLBT History Project, the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance, and Presente.org. 

This advocacy builds upon a letter previously sent to the Administration encouraging it to include LGBT immigrants.