UAFA Strategy: A Multipronged Approach

Let’s continue to push for UAFA and make sure that Comprehensive Immigration reform will include LGBT families.

There has been a lot of discussion these past few days on Out4Immigration’s listserv about the strategy moving forward… and here’s my perspective about why we are doing what we are doing.

I am not a lobbyist or an expert, but I am writing as someone who was affected by this issue and who has been working on this issue (with a lot of folks on this list) for the past 9 years, and in the past few, has had the chance to meet with Rep. Mike Honda (personally a couple of times) and his staffers, Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s staffers, Rep. Pelosi’s staffers, as well as [Senators] Feinstein and Boxer’s staffers.  In addition, I have been on a few conference calls organized by immigrant organizations nationally pushing for immigration reform, just so I can get updated about what is happening and use the occasion to educate myself on the issue affected by the bigger immigrant community as well as educate them about our issue – passing the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA).
Before I go on, here are a couple of links that you might be interested in reading:

• LGBT immigration reform tied to larger effort, Bay Area Reporter:  http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=4004 – note the comments made by Rep. Honda towards the end of the article.

• The text of the Reuniting Families Act (RFA):  http://honda.house.gov/rfa/familyunitybilltext.pdf introduced by Rep. Mike Honda that already includes UAFA in his legislation.

• Summary of the bill, RFA, at thomas.loc.gov:  http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HR02709:@@@L&summ2=m&

That said, in all of Out4Immigration’s letter writing and education campaigns, we have been pushing for the passage of UAFA and included a sentence or two about RFA as well as our inclusion into CIR.  Also, as of today, there is NO comprehensive Immigration reform bill yet… just like there is no health care reform bill today.  NONE.  All we have is a few immigration-related bills being introduced in advance of the CIR.  What does this mean?  The CIR, that is being written by [Senator] Schumer and [Representative] Lofgren, will pull in all the immigration bills that have been introduced in this session and get the bill out for a vote.
I personally think we will be hurting our cause if we just concentrate on one strategy,  i.e. push only for UAFA and forget about CIR, and have reiterated this on numerous occasions.  I believe we all can do more than 2 things at the same time.

Here are some of my reasons (hopefully, you would have read some of the links above):

1. The RFA bill is a very solid bill that has already included UAFA in the text.  The bigger picture of the bill is to reduce the backlogs of applications based on Family by recapturing the visas that were allocated to other categories and not used.  For example, citizens from Singapore and Chileans have a special H1-B category (called H1-B1)… applicants from these countries do not have to “fight” with the pool of H1-B applications every year.  However, while the normal H1-B visa usually runs out quickly, there are usually H1-B1 visas left over, since the number of applications is less than the quota.  There is a rule to recapture those unused visas and put them back into H1-B…. there are no rules for green card.  This [situation] leads to major backlogs where families can be waiting for 20 years for the green card to be approved, and a HUGE number of people, particularly Asians, are affected by this.  I personally know of a few members on our lists who have been waiting for more than 15 years to get their green card this way (while waiting for UAFA to pass).
2. Of course, the concern is that the senate version of RFA does not include UAFA.  However, from what I have read and heard so far, it seemed that it would be easier for UAFA to be added to the senate bill during conference than it will be to remove the house version of the bill entirely.
3. Representative Mike Honda [D-CA-15], who introduced the bill, included UAFA in RFA and made sure that it will be very difficult to take out UAFA.  What does this mean?  This means that if congress does not want LGBT issues in immigration reform, they would have to vote down his bill, which will anger a lot of communities since (1) Filipino veterans are affected by the bill, (2) a lot of minority communities are affected by this issue.  Also, it means that if they want LGBT out of the bill, they would have to rewrite the bill.
   • I am going to go out on a limb here and say I am going to take Rep Honda at his word.  On various occasions that I have had a chance to speak with him, he has always shown a keen sense of understanding the issue facing same-sex binational couples, knows UAFA by its name, and continues to encourage me to keep the drumbeat going, keep the pressure on.  A few of our members on this list have also spoken passionately about this issue with him (Judy Rickard is one of them) and I am pretty sure that she could vouch for that.  More than that, on a town hall I attended where he spoke together with Luiz Gutierrez, [Rep. Honda] specifically talked about same-sex binational couples and why it is wrong to discriminate against us.
   • APALC, Asian Pacific American Legal Center put out a report last year called “A Devastating Wait:  Family Unity and The Immigration Backlogs”.  The report calls for the passage of UAFA and repeal of DOMA.  In its recommendation, they recommended that “permanent partners” be added to sections of US Immigration law where “spouse” now appears.  They have also worked on this issue tirelessly with Rep. Honda, who has taken it one step further by including UAFA in his bill.
4. I have been on a lot of conference calls about CIR – and every opportunity I get, I will try to educate the callers about UAFA and push for its passage and inclusion… in the beginning, there was silence, but it is changing as I have been getting more support in recent months.  I have even been asked to write specifically about UAFA and its inclusion in CIR in APAforProgress.org.  I don’t know about you, but in the nine years that I have been working on this issue, this is not only a big honor but this indicates to me that the [Asian-American] community has come to realize that this is a BIG issue too.
5. During those conference calls, it was made known to us that Rep. Honda’s bill has been marked up. From what I can gather, this means that the committee is interested in this bill and have started to get the groundwork done on the bill, analysis and stuff for inclusion in CIR.
6. Out4Immigration was also invited by OCA (Organization of Chinese Americans) to speak about the immigration discrimination faced by same-sex binational couples 2 weeks ago in their annual conference in San Francisco.  In addition to inviting Shirley Tan and Jay Mercardo to be on the panel, they also invited Melanie Nathan and me to provide more information about this issue. The conference room that we were in was packed with lots of people standing up interested in hearing about this issue.

So what I am trying to say here is… UAFA is not going to be a bill tagged on to the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill, like the repeal of the HIV Ban was tagged on to PEPFAR last year.  If this is the case, they could easily remove the bill during conference once CIR is passed.  UAFA is ALREADY included in RFA… so if they want to remove UAFA from CIR during conference or during floor vote/debate, they would have to remove RFA entirely.

Pushing for the passage of UAFA is ongoing and will never stop, but it is also important to note that immigration law is discriminatory on so many levels and we need to stand up and support CIR. The majority of the immigrant community has stood up in support of our issue and supports the inclusion of UAFA in CIR…  Our representative, Rep. Honda, and many progressive organizations have the political will to stand out and advocate for our issue and included UAFA into his bill to fix the situation with Comprehensive Immigration Reform…  We need to back them up.

Amos Lim

I cannot speak for other organizations, but I think pushing for more sponsors for UAFA and adding a sentence or two in support of CIR and our inclusion in CIR will only strengthen our position and our support.  Just concentrating on one strategy will not benefit us at all.

— (on behalf of) Amos Lim, with his permission