What LGBT People Need to Know About the Immigration Reform Bill

The “gang of eight” senators introduced their immigration reform bill yesterday. We applaud their efforts and we are optimistic that 2013 is the year we will address the needs of the more than 11 million undocumented, of whom more than 260,000 are LGBT and more than 20,000 are transgender.

Recently, NCTE joined more than 30 transgender organizations in setting forth a set of principles for comprehensive immigration reform. The initial bill that was just introduced includes some of those principles, but has important gaps and some problematic provisions. The bill includes many provisions that would benefit vulnerable trans immigrants and their families, including a much-needed pathway to citizenship, albeit a long and arduous one, a swift pathway for “DREAMers” who came to the US at a young age and have finished high school, and lifting the harsh one-year filing deadline for asylum-seekers.

The new bill also has significant gaps. As the legislation moves forward in the Senate, we must press to ensure that the final bill:

• Includes all families, including LGBT families, in the family visa system.
• Makes the pathway to citizenship realistic and accessible to transgender immigrants.
• Ensures that a new  proposed employment verification system doesn’t violate the privacy of trans workers (such as by using unnecessary gender markers).
• Shrinks the wasteful and inhumane immigration detention system and sharply limits solitary confinement.

Share your immigration story so we can improve these provisions in the proposal.

Read our full analysis of what the immigration reform proposal means for LGBT people below.

Report from the Conference on the Rights of LGBT People in Europe

I was privileged to represent NCTE and join lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex activists from across Europe, as well as a few fellow North Americans, last month in Paris at the “Conference on the Rights of LGBT People in Europe”, hosted by the governments of France and Poland.

The conference, attended by government ministers and human rights activists from around the continent, is part of a series of international meetings focused on elevating these issues within the global human rights framework. An Asian regional meeting was held earlier in March in Kathmandu, Nepal, and a Latin American regional meeting will be held this week in Brasilia, Brazil, concluding in mid-April with a global summit in Oslo, Norway, hosted by the South African and Norwegian governments.

NCTE was invited to attend as a member of the Council for Global Equality, together with Council staffer Mark Bromley, and I was very honored to be asked to speak on one of the workshop panels regarding legal gender recognition as a human rights issue. The conference was a tremendous opportunity to meet colleagues from Transgender Europe (TGEU), the Organization Intersex International, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association of Europe (ILGA-Europe), and other ILGA-Europe member organizations. These activists are doing fantastic work across Europe and beyond. No country today can boast a perfect record when it comes to the human rights of LGBTI people – though some have further to go than others – and these activists along with others around the world are doing incredible work from which US activists should draw inspiration and insight.

I was particularly honored not only to attend but to participate as a speaker in a workshop on “Liberties – Fighting Discrimination Against LGBT Persons,” which focused on the topics of gender recognition and attacks on the rights of expression and assembly. The following are my prepared remarks from the workshop:

I would like to outline for our discussion this afternoon the issue of gender recognition and its connection to fundamental rights.

The designation of one’s gender by the state is a constant presence in everyday life today. For most it is experienced as perhaps benign and hardly noticed, but for millions of trans people today it is a source of ever present anxiety, humiliation, and fear, because our official documents and records announce a gender at odds with our core personal identity. This means that, for example, a trans woman like myself must display a male gender marker every time she seeks to:

• apply for employment
• enroll in school
• open a bank account
• travel
• apply for public benefits
• or even seek help in a crisis

Lack of gender recognition, and the ever present documentation of the wrong gender identifier not only “outs” individuals involuntarily in numerous and often vulnerable situations; it not only thrusts one’s trans status into the forefront in every part of social and economic life; it does even more than that. Lack of gender recognition also has the effect if conveying to everyone we encounter the stigmatizing message that we are not who we say we are, and implicitly that our core identity is a kind of fraud, to be disregarded or regarded with disdain.  In effect, lack of gender recognition imposes a mark of inferior social status.

NCTE Joins Over 30 Trans Groups in Calling for Immigration Reform

Broad coalition release Statement of Principles on Immigration Reform

As thousands gather in Washington, DC  in support of immigration reform, the National Center for Transgender Equality and over 30 transgender service and advocacy groups released a Statement of Principles on Immigration Reform. The statement outlines fundamental policies critical for reform that affect the estimated 20,000 undocumented transgender adults in the U.S., and thousands of transgender youth who came to the U.S. at an early age and also lack legal status.

NCTE Director of Policy Harper Jean Tobin said, “For thousands of transgender immigrants and their families, the need for reform is especially urgent. They are frequently locked out of asylum protections when they come here fleeing anti-trans violence, denied recognition for their families, subjected to especially harsh and dangerous detention conditions, and often deported back into harm’s way. This goes to the core of what NCTE stands for.”

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Statement signatories include local and national transgender advocacy groups from across the U.S. including the Trans People of Color Coalition, Gender Justice Nevada, and The TransLatin@ Coalition urging Congress for a more fair and humane immigration system for transgender and non-transgender people alike.

Share an experience of how immigration laws affect you as an LGBT person.

Read the Immigration Reform Statement of Principles below or download it here.

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NCTE Staff Top Inaugural “Trans 100″ List

Released today, the Trans 100 list celebrates transgender activists, artists,  and legal advocates  in the U.S. NCTE is honored that the inaugural Trans 100 list recognizes the contributions of current staff and board members Mara Keisling, Harper Jean Tobin, Marisa Richmond, and Avory Faucette, as well as former staff and board members Diego Sanchez, Masen Davis and Jaan Williams. The Trans 100 list will be released annually.

Trans 100 is an effort to change the media conversation around transgender people to highlight the positive changes transgender people are making in the U.S. Nominations were collected in an open nominations period and the effort to curate the list was co-directed by Toni D’Orsay, Executive Director of This Is How, and Jen Richards of We Happy Trans, and sponsored by GLAAD.

“The only sustainable self-interest is that which extends the sense of self to include the whole,” said Jen Richards at the Trans 100 launch event. “Look around: women, men, people of color, genderqueer people, crossdressers, showgirls, sex workers, academics, activists, artists, and allies. We are all one community.”

NCTE Board Chair Marcus Waterbury said, “NCTE is proud to have our staff and board be among those recognized in the Trans 100 and especially proud to be honored alongside many of our close friends and allies. As NCTE Board Chair, I have the pleasure of working with this profoundly effective team and these  accolades only pushes our team to do more and to do it better.”

View the full list here.

Immigration Reform is a Key LGBT Issue

In anticipation of immigration reform proposals expected this week, a strong consensus has emerged that immigration is a key issue for the LGBT community, which includes an estimated 267,000 undocumented LGBT adults. This is especially true for transgender immigrants and their loved ones, who are especially vulnerable to discrimination, violence, detention, and deportation. 

In NCTE’s Blueprint for Equality, we noted that: “As our political system fails to deliver meaningful immigration reform, millions of individuals and families in the United States face unspeakable hardships, including the forced separation of families, escalating deportations of individuals with deep roots in their communities who have committed no serious wrong­doing, and indefinite detention in cruel and abusive conditions. The government’s failure to recognize LGBT families exacerbates the hardships on our community, and transgender people frequently find their relation­ships challenged regardless of the gender of their partner.”

NCTE Condemns Committee Action on AZ Anti-Trans Bathroom Bill, SB 1045

Yesterday, in a 7-4 vote, the unnecessary and discriminatory bathroom bill, SB1045, moved forward from the Appropriations Committee to the House floor. SB1045 renders local LGBT nondiscrimination laws unenforceable and protects businesses and other facility managers that choose to discriminate against transgender and gender nonconforming public restroom users.

In response to the committee vote on SB1045, National Center for Transgender Equality Executive Director Mara Keisling said:

“The Arizona Appropriations Committee approved an incredibly discriminatory and hateful bill that specifically targets transgender people. Rejecting the thousands of people who’ve spoken out against SB1045 in Arizona and across the United States, Rep. Kavanagh and his six allies instead chose to defend discrimination and protect discriminators. SB1045 brings more shame to Arizona’s legislature for isolating and targeting another marginalized community. Transgender Arizonans and our allies stand stronger and more determined to put an end to Rep. Kavanagh’s anti-transgender campaign.”

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A Living Wage for Trans Workers

This week, discussions about raising the federal minimum wage came to the forefront again after Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) declared that the minimum wage would currently be $22 an hour if it had kept up with worker productivity. Senator Warren points out that our current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour does not reflect the cost of living increases or worker productivity increases that we have experienced over the past several decades.

A wage increase would have a significant effect on transgender people. Compared to the general population, transgender people are four times more likely to have a household income of less than $10,000 per year.  This extreme poverty is directly tied to the widespread discrimination against transgender people in employment and other sectors, which force an outsized share of transgender people into minimum-wage jobs.