Gay Couples And Immigration

Today in the U.S. if a gay U.S. citizen falls in love with a non-citizen they cannot legally sponsor their partner to remain in the U.S. like heterosexual citizens. This is true for many countries and often the couple has no choice but to have one continue to live without documents or forever be separated.


This is the story of Lee a 35, stay-at-home mother, from South Africa
When Lee came to New Jersey at the age of 19 to work as a nanny, she planned to stay just one year. But when the year was up, she didn’t want to go back to her hometown of Durban in apartheid-era South Africa. “My eyes had been opened,” she says. Plus, she was beginning to question her sexuality, at a time when being gay in South Africa could be grounds for arrest. At a party in Manhattan three years later, she met an American girl and fell in love. They now have 2-year-old twin boys (with the help of an anonymous sperm donor). But because Lee and her partner cannot get married, she remains undocumented. “I do not have legal rights to my kids,” she says. Being in the U.S. illegally has meant that she has had to choose between the family she’s made here and the one back in South Africa. “We’ve become really sad,” she says, “at the notion of me not being able to go home and show our beautiful children to my family.”

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O'Reilly Guest Mocks People of Chinese Heritage

"They said that you were too young, I thought that was your name." Seconds later, the song asked: "How do you hide your baby fat? You can fake a passport, or do the twist, but you don't seem to know how to drive." McIntyre commented, "I thought 'baby fat' was one of the Chinese volleyball players."

Seriously? Someone slap him. Hard.

Swarthy Need Not Apply

Light-skinned immigrants in the United States make more money on average than those with darker complexions, and the chief reason appears to be discrimination, a researcher says.

The scholar, Joni Hersch, a professor of law and economics at Vanderbilt University, looked at a government survey of 2,084 legal immigrants to the United States from around the world and found that those with the lightest skin earned an average of 8 percent to 15 percent more than similar immigrants with much darker skin.

“On average,” Dr. Hersch said, “being one shade lighter has about the same effect as having an additional year of education.”

The study also found that taller immigrants earned more than shorter ones, with an extra inch of height associated with a 1 percent increase in income.

Dr. Hersch took into consideration other factors that could affect wages, like English-language proficiency, education, occupation, race or country of origin, and found that skin tone still seemed to make a difference in earnings.

“I thought that once we controlled for race and nationality, I expected the difference to go away,” Dr. Hersch said, “but even with people from the same country, the same race, skin color really matters.”

Although many cultures show a bias toward lighter skin, she said her analysis showed that the skin-color advantage was not based on preferential treatment for light-skinned people in their country of origin. The bias, she said, occurs in the United States.

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He’s an... Illegal Eh-lien

He’s stealing our jobs and our women. Plus, he talks funny.......click here for the story

This is the story of Morgan an undocumented immigrant from Canada. Go on read the story and laugh, it's pretty funny. But never forget that Morgan is not typical. He gives undocumented immigrants a bad name. Unlike most undocumented immigrants, he does not pay taxes, repeatedly crosses the border, and has a general ambivalence towards the United States. He does not want to provide a better life for his family or even himself. He is exactly what the anti-immigration crowd likes to point to when they start spewing their hate except they seem to be tolerating him because he a white Canadian. Check out the discussion on the hypocrisy of the anti-immigration groups over at ALIPAC.net . They find Morgan more acceptable than say Dr.Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa. The same anti-immigration site tolerating Morgan wanted Alfredo gone. Not about race eh?

In all fairness, Morgan's a good guy and the first to admit that he doesn't compare to the immigrants who come here looking for a better life. He also acknowledges the racism behind people's acceptance of him but not his brown skinned counterparts as yet another sign that this country isn't as colorblind as it likes to think it is.

Salvation Army and English ONLY

My first day volunteering as a salvation army bell ringer was on a cold day with a wind chill of -15. I remember no one came to pick up the kettle when we were done. We waited for 3 hours until someone finally showed. When we got home and removed our gloves, our fingers had purple and gray burns from the cold.

Despite this experience, we showed up the next year and the year after. It turned into a yearly tradition. Friends and family began to stop by with tea and cocoa and of course donations every year. For nearly a decade no matter how cold, busy, or sick we were, we made sure to make time for bell ringing.

So imagine how disappointed I was when I found out The Salvation Army has decided to join in on the hostile anti-immigrant climate.

A few salvation army managers recently implemented an English only rule for their employees. This means that even if you speak perfect English, but want to speak to your co-worker in Spanish, you could be fired. According to current law a business can turn away applicants who do not speak English if it interferes with job duties or safety. However, this is not the case with The Salvation Army. The Salvation Army is barring any language but English from being spoken in cases when it isn't necessary. If co-workers were chatting about non-work related issues in Spanish, that would be against the rules and possible grounds for termination.

I only speak English but even I was offended by that rule. This rule was meant to single out immigrants. It's one thing to require knowledge of English and require you to use it when necessary. It's another to force you use it when is isn't necessary. The only purpose this rule has is to belittle immigrant employees who retain other language skills.

If this were the case with the U.S. government, President Bush might have been in violation of these rules. He enjoys practicing his Spanish. I don't believe any of the major candidates running for his position speak a foreign language and I can't really judge seeing as how I'm guilty as well. In my lifetime I have been fluent in 3 languages but years of not practicing has left me with English as my sole means of communication (and like Bush, that's up for argument).

*I am not encouraging people to stop supporting the salvation army. I'm merely expressing my disappointment in an organization I once greatly admired. I still do and you should too but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable for these actions.