A Chicago-based group working for immigration
reform finds that it has to combat more than
commonplace anti-immigrant sentiment, because
they champion the rights of GLBT immigrants.
The Chicago Tribune published a story on the
challenges faced by organizers of the new Global
Gays Initiative which seeks to overturn outdated and
unnecessary travel restrictions on HIV positive people
entering the United States, as well as promote the
human rights of illegal aliens who are GLBT and seek
protections for gay and lesbian families in which an
American citizen is partnered with a non-citizen.
The Tribune article cited the work of Tania Unzueta, an
immigration rights activist who takes an interest in the
stories of GLBT immigrants such as Victoria Arellano,
a transgendered Mexican woman living with AIDS who
was apprehended as an illegal alien and detained in
San Pedro, where detention center officials refused
her the medication she needed.
Arellano died last summer, but, said Unzueta in the
Tribune article, little note was taken; instead, the story
of another illegal alien, Elvira Arellano, whose name
was similar but whose story was markedly different,
captured attention: Elvira had sought refuge in a Los
Angeles-area church, but eventually left he church and
was deported. It was a dramatic story that did not have
to acknowledge HIV, AIDS, or the existence of GLBT
people among immigrants.
But immigration activists took notice, and have
increased their efforts to ensure that the federal
government take seriously the medical needs of
detainees being held pending their repatriation.
Along with that concern is a wish to see a broad
exclusion of HIV positive travelers from entering U.S
borders, a policy that was implemented two decades
ago and has been kep tin place ever since, despite a
better understanding of HIV: it is not spread through
casual contact, for example, and can better be
managed through medication now than in the past.
