// March 1st, 2010 // 1 Comment » // All things LGBT, Immigration, Moron of the Week
Sorry for not blogging more often – I have been sick since January 3 and found out on Thursday that I am in early stages of pneumonia. Let me not make this into a post about how health care in America is worse than health care in Fiji.
But I had to go to summit in New York on “Immigration Reform: LGBT Community” –A summit where I was only invited as a blogger who is LGBT. Interesting.
Lets also ignore the fact that I took my drowning left lung into the snowpocalypse ice-winter of New York. At one point, I was having breakfast at 8am EST at a cafe and heard news about the earthquake in Chile and the fact that most of the Pacific had a tsunami warning. I realized that it meant ALL my families in Fiji, Australia, New Zealand and even San Francisco. Then, I heard the CNN commentator say “Fugee” and that got me more mad than upset, and hyper-ventilating in anger is not good for drowning lungs. I got a little too ‘excited’, couldn’t breath and didn’t think I could walk the two blocks needed to get back to my hotel. But I am a fighter.
I fully expected to go to the summit later that day and steel myself against ignorance from gay white bloggers on immigration issues, hear my life getting dissected right in front of me and sit through the torture bracing myself against any real permanent damage. Sure, I heard some pretty stupid things like,
1. Asking the Trail of Dreams students where they are in the citizenship process. I don’t know gay whitey. Where are you in the marriage process? Just like you can’t just go into the city hall of any state to get a marriage license, most undocumented students cannot just apply or sit a test. Yikes! Maybe the question was meant with genuine concern but it’s a question that makes us all cringe each time we hear it. The way it was phrased was not at all sensitive.
2. I adore Robert Bray and he has many great things to say. But sir, that meeting was not a safe space for me. I was the only undocumented person in the room, the only one who truly understood the LGBT immigrant experience and possibly one of the few people one who had spent considerable time writing and talking about these intersectional oppressions. I am strong but it gets really lonely sometimes. And it is somewhat hurtful when people are talking and asking questions about your life without acknowledging your presence and work. And this was a complete failure on the part of people who decided to exclude me from any panels.
3. Organizer of the summit: “Oh you are undocumented?!!” FAIL. Just, epic fail. Seriously, just google me.
I probably spent more time outside the room than inside it due to the constant coughing fits and the need to not hear certain things. Why am I putting myself in this cold environment when I can be at home, warm and tucked under the covers sleeping, eating and catching up on two weeks of missed Smallville and Indian TV dramas? Can you read into the cold-warm metaphors here?
I will give mad props to Eric Berndt from the National Immigration Justice Center for a fantastic presentation on how LGBT immigrants suffer disproportionately through inhumane detention and how the system is failing us.
And Rachel Tiven from Immigration Equality cracked me up more than once by talking about “gay DreamActivists” and then “straight DreamActivists.” Of course, the joke here is that DreamActivist.org was built and driven primarily by two queers for so long that “straight DreamActivist” almost sounded like an oxymoron the first time I heard it. I never thought people would talk about us in those terms but it was so absolutely refreshing to my ears. Everyone who works on the Dream Act is called a “Dream Activist.” That’s just sweet. I gave both Rachel Tiven and Steve Ralls from IE a “I support the DREAM Act” button
I think the Trail of Dreams presentation did take the room by storm but the DREAM Act was hardly mentioned, which just reminds me of events where undocumented students are asked to talk about their life but not about the bill pertaining to them by event organizers more concerned about the “message” of comprehensive reform. Excluding our issues and our work around the DREAM Act is not comprehensive.
I do wish we could have heard from someone who worked with LGBT immigrant youth on what the DREAM Act is, who is organizing around it, how even straight undocumented youth are using the LGBT concept of “coming out” for themselves, how LGBT undocumented youth face some unique problems (more are homelessness, at risk of suicide, more compelled into marriage of convenience by the family and the system) and how the issues of the LGBT and immigration community are so intrinsically linked to the violence of “citizenship.” Nevermind my life experience, education and knowledge. FAIL. Then again, people listen in a fascinating manner but don’t do anything to change our lives. We have to make change ourselves, which is why young undocumented people are the leaders of any immigration reform movement at the grassroots level.
Maybe we should not even talk about it and just forget the last 4 hours of how the conversation simply went down the drain when representatives from the Reform Immigration for America Campaign started talking to a room full of LGBTQ bloggers on why they should support an anti-equality immigration reform.
Yeah, no. And the moron of the week is Ali Noorani from the National Immigration Forum. Hands-down. He did us the honors.
Click here: http://j.mp/RI4AFAIL
