Lesbians under Surveillance: Same-Sex Immigration Reform, Gay Rights, and the Problem of Queer Liberalism

To the immigrant community, we're the gays; to the gay community, we're immigrants; and in the end, we're invisible.... I would like to stop being a wedge issue and be able to say that I'm fully a member of two communities (Donayre, 2002: 25). IN THE WAKE OF SEPTEMBER 11 AND THE GLOBAL "WAR ON TERROR," ISSUES OF citizenship and immigration have come to the center of U.S. political discourse. Critics .have observed that the Bush administration used the perceived security crisis generated by the September 11 attacks and their aftermath to justify implementation of anti-immigrant policies. Many policies were designed before September 11, but were difficult to enact legally (see, Ahmed, 2004; Alexander, 2006; and Layoun, 2006). One piece of legislation is the infamous USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 (short for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism). Due to such legislation, certain communities have become more vulnerable to charges of terrorism than others; "terrorist activity" has become synonymous with those who appear "Middle Eastern," "Arab," or "Muslim." (1) Post-September 11 anti-terror legislation has facilitated the emergence of an increasingly anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and fundamentally racist political culture. (2) The binational same-sex couple is one minority group that has become especially vulnerable to anti-immigrant measures. Nineteen countries currently allow lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens to sponsor their partners for the purposes of immigration, but the United States is not one of them. (3) Although same-sex marriage has been legalized in Massachusetts, Vermont, and, more recently, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Connecticut, marriages performed within these states fail to have an impact upon federal immigration law, due to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA defines marriage for federal purposes as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife," but permits individual states to disregard same-sex unions performed in other states. (4) Because a tourist visa allows non-U.S, citizens to remain within the United States for six months out of every year, the American partner in any lesbian or gay binational relationship must travel for the other six months of the year, or the couple will remain separated. Maintaining a binational relationship thus requires the U.S.-based partner to have a significant amount of disposable income. Moreover, in countries such as Mexico, Brazil, and Guatemala, it is extremely difficult for non-U.S, citizens to obtain a U.S. tourist visa, unless they reside in a particularly affluent area of the country, or happen to live near the border and can come in and out of the United States through legal or extralegal means that do not require large amounts of capital. Due to these intersecting modes of discrimination, binational same-sex couples in the United States have only four options: terminate their relationship, stay together but remain separated, relocate to another country where same-sex partnerships are recognized for the purposes of immigration, or remain in the United States and pursue a love that is, for all intents and purposes, illegal. Caught between the general panic about borders and the conservative backlash against gay marriage, binational same-sex couples in the United States constitute a significant but largely unacknowledged minority within the LGBT community. (5) Aside from Eithne Luibheid's (2008) article in the "Queer/Migration" special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, the subject of same-sex immigration rights in the United States has received very little academic attention. Given the increasing turn toward issues of citizenship and immigration in feminist and queer studies post-September 11, this is surprising. (6) As I will argue in this article, the issue of immigration rights for same-sex couples raises important questions about the relationship between sexuality, immigration, and gay rights, as well as about the broader practices of criminalization and surveillance in a post-September 11 world. …