Here’s a bill gaining support in Congress that takes two of the most heated political topics – immigration reform and same-sex marriages – and combines them to create a relatively mild but still controversial reform. The Uniting American Families Act of 2009 would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to allow U.S. citizens to sponsor same-sex permanent partners to immigrate legally to the U.S. and live and work here permanently.
Likewise, this is just a small part of the larger immigration debate. In 2007, Congress and the Bush administration tried to enact comprehensive immigration reform legislation, which would have provided a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, increase border security, create a new guest worker program and more. After a long and unpleasant debate in the Senate, the bill failed to pass cloture and was tabled indefinitely. Since then, smaller immigration reform proposals have been proposed as stand-alone bills in Congress, but so far Congress has treated the immigration topic as toxic and haven’t touched anything related to it. The Uniting American Families Act will probably suffer from falling roughly into this category.
Back to the bill itself. It’s long but simple. Basically it adds the words “or permanent partner” after the word “spouse” everywhere it occurs in the Immigration and Nationality Act. It also defines lays out a definition for “permanent partner”
Gay Rights Meet Immigration Reform
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USAFrance 428 days ago
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Promoting public awareness of the need for fairness in immigration policy particularly as it relates to the rights of same-sex bi-national couples in the United States who seek equal immigration rights; Providing information regarding political issues relating to gay immigration equality issues, rights and policy.
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