Protest Against Treatment of LGBT Undocumented Immigrants In California

Contrary to how some would spin the story, transgender inmates aren't looking for "special treatment".

I don't think any trans person would deny that when one of us commits a crime, we should pay our "debt to society", whatever that may be.  Being trans might drive someone to, say, prostitution (which, I believe, shouldn't be a crime) or even other illegal acts out of desperation or the pure and simple stress of incurring the prejudice we face.  

And I think that most people would agree that if one of the purposes of prison or jail is to rehabilitate people, an inmate should not be tortured or live with the danger of sexual abuse.  I believe that most would also agree that a prisoner shouldn't be thrown into solitary confinement simply because the system doesn't know what else to do with him or her.

Yet all of the things I've mentioned in the previous paragraph routinely happen to transgender inmates.  Some end up in solitary because they've been placed in the system according to the gender they were assigned at birth and the wardens simply don't know how else to keep the inmate from being sexually attacked.  Or, trans inmates might be so placed simply out of spite and hate.

Being confined under such conditions--and having to become, in essence, a hardened criminal in order to survive among hardened criminals--makes recidivism all the more likely.  After all, if you take a person who has no marketable skills or other means of survival and place him or her in an environment in which the choice is between becoming predator or prey--and then release that person into the environment from which he or she came (which could well be the streets), what is that person going to do after he or she can't get legal employment, housing or social services?

That is why 70 protesters chained themselves together in front of the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana, CA.  There, as in other places, undocumented immigrants--especially those who are LGBT, with a particular emphasis on the "T"--are routinely subject to the conditions I've described.  And those inmates, as often as not, have no one to fight for them.

If someone in your family got arrested, you probably wouldn't want him or her to end up in the conditions I've described.  Why, then, should undocumented transgender immigrants be forced to live that way?

Stranded For Coming Out

People sometimes tell me I'm lucky to be a writer and in the academic world.  They believe--with more than some justification--that "educated" and "creative" people are more receptive, if not welcoming, to transgender people.

Now, if you think I've used a lot of qualifiers in the preceding sentences, you're right and I have good reason for doing so.  On the whole, I probably fared better after "coming out" and starting my transition than I might have in other work environments.  Still, there were people who said and did things that were inappropriate and reflected ignorance if not outright hostility.  Interestingly, I never experienced such treatment from students or fellow writers.  A few faculty members chilled toward me, but most of the difficulties I experienced came from administrators. That may have had more to do with the particular administrators in question than with any general principle.  

Fortunately, I have good relations with my current colleagues.  Some have known me "from the beginning", if you will, while others I met during and since my transition.  

So, perhaps, I can say--as Dan Savage likes to tell LGBT teenagers who are being bullied--"It gets better!"  At least, I'd like to be able to say that to Meredith Talusan.

I've never met her.  In fact, I learned of her only from a news item posted on ABS-CBN News yesterday. She's a graduate student in literature at Cornell University, where she recently applied for a professional position.  As a scholarship student, she's entitled to free on-campus housing and meals.

But now she may lose those--and, perhaps, her scholarship and standing as a student.  No, she didn't fail a class or miss a deadline.  Rather, she had the temerity to protest the harassment she experienced from her housemate and, apparently, others in the university community.  She says people heckle her with comments like "You're a man dressed as a woman!" and "You lost your penis!"

What makes her situation all the more disconcerting, at least for her, is that she's thousands of miles from her home in the Philippines. During an impromptu protest she and some friends staged against her mistreatment, they chanted, "This is what democracy looks like!"  

Like so many who come from faraway countries to work and study in the US, she works hard toward her goal of "a better life".  But her path to that life has been detoured, at least for now, as she was suspended from the house in which she'd been living and has been denied access to meals.  But she has refused to leave and has filed an appeal.

 

On Immigration, Obama Helps Everyone But Us

We've all heard that "politics make strange bedfellows."

Well, even with that in mind, it's really strange to see the TEA party and LGBT people upset with President Obama over the same issue: specifically, the immigration plan he announced last week.

Of course, our objections are not the same as those of Mitch McConnell and his acolytes.  They think Obama said "Let 'em all in!" In contrast, some of us--or those we love--could be kept from entering or returning to the US, or from living without fear of losing our jobs, places of residence and the communities we've joined or made for ourselves.

One part of Obama's plan calls for granting short-term deferred action and working rights to parents of US citizens and legal permanent residents who have been in this country for at least five years.  While that is laudable, it also fails to take into account that undocumented LGBT immigrants are far less likely, due to marriage and adoption laws, to have children who are US citizens.  Moreover, many LGBT people have close, and even critical, relationships with nieces, nephews and other extended family members who are not considered in the plan.

In other words, this part of the plan devalues LGBT family relationships, whether or not that is Obama's intention.

Another part of the plan that doesn't take such relationships into consideration is the one calling for provisional waivers of unlawful presence to include the spouses, sons and daughters of lawful permanent residents and the sons and daughters of US citizens.

Aside from its failure to consider LGBT family relationships, the plan also doesn't acknowledge that some LGBT asylum-seekers are fleeing persecution, violence and even the threat of death in their native countries.  It also doesn't take into account that LGBT immigrants are fifteen times as likely as other immigrants to be sexually assaulted in detention centers.

Many LGBT people heard Obama's promise to champion our causes and voted for him.  At times, he has lived up to that pledge.  But this time, he's dropped the ball--and I'm not talking about the one on the court.

Running Here For Their Lives

In an earlier post, I described the ordeal of "Fahrida," who was in one of my first support groups.  Now I will tell you something you might have guessed from her name:  In her home country, she was a hijra.  In Western countries, they are often classified as transgender or intersexed, but those terms are not exact equivalents to what hijra are, much less the roles they play in those societies.


As a feminine boy, she was outcast by her family and community.  While she could demand fees for appearing at weddings and such, and could even extort men or do sex work, she did not want to do those things.  Anyone who's ever done, or known anyone who's done, sex work realizes the risk of experiencing violence--or even being murdered--that goes along with such work.  Those risks are even greater for the hijra, who, like transgender and other gender-non-conforming people, experience the most brutal and gratuitous kinds of violence.


She cited these risks in her appeal to remain in this country.  That appeal was denied, as was her request to return to this country from a third country where she now lives.


What a lot of people don't realize is that LGBT--especially T--people who come to this country are often, literally, running for their lives.  Even though they can meet with grisly, violent deaths here, the risk is somewhat lower, and there is more of a chance of finding individuals or groups of people who will accept them.  They will not be confined to living among other bands of outcasts, as the hijra are in countries like Pakistan.


Plus, if they can stay, there is at least some chance of getting an education and doing something besides sex work--even if it's driving a cab, as Fahrida did when she was here.