Immigration Equality Tells House Subcommittee: Remember LGBT Binational Families

By Steve Ralls on 01/27/2011 @ 01:06 PM

Yesterday, the House Subcommittee on Immigration held its first hearing of the 112th Congress. The Subcommittee's new Chairman, in the weeks leading up to yesterday's hearing, made clear that he intends to kick-off the new Congress by focusing lawmakers' attention on "enforcement-only" issues, which would ultimately mean tearing more immigrant families apart.

In response to the Chairman's remarks - and in anticipation of yesterday's hearing - our friends at the National Immigration Forum mobilized allied organizations to speak out on behalf of immigrant families. The Immigration Equality Action Fund was proud to join the Forum and give voice to our families, too. Yesterday, we submitted the following statement for the record:

As the House Immigration Subcommittee begins its work to oversee the country’s immigration policy, the Immigration Equality Action Fund urges lawmakers to fix our nation’s broken immigration system through comprehensive reform legislation which honors our nation’s history as a country of immigrants, and works to enact policies which benefit businesses and keep families together.

Only Congress can fix the broken immigration system, and it must prioritize tackling this immensely important issue. We must update our country’s immigration laws in a way that recognizes the enormous economic contribution that millions of immigrants – both documented and undocumented – have made to fuel our nation’s progress. Those who are undocumented should be provided with a pathway to citizenship. At the same time, we must also ensure that immigration reform prioritizes family unification, which has been the foundation of U.S. immigration policy for decades, ensuring that American citizens and residents are united with immigrant loved ones. These should include lesbian and gay Americans, whose families are too often torn apart because of the inability of those Americans to sponsor their foreign born partners for residency.

It is critically important that American businesses have the policies and laws they need to best compete in the global economy. Our immigration system is an important component of ensuring that competitive edge. We urge lawmakers, as they begin work in this new Congress, to ensure our laws allow businesses to recruit and retain the best and brightest talent and allow families to remain together in, and contribute economically to, the country they call home.

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