Today we issued a statement with our friends at Forward Together regarding the impacts on LGBTQ families of the revised, reissued travel ban (PDF here).
Our Family Coalition joins Forward Together to condemn the State Department’s re-issued, “modified” travel ban on visitors or refugees from six Muslim-majority nations. It does more than amplify Islamophobia and distract from credible measures to address the real sources of domestic terrorism. By permitting entry only to those found to have “bona fide” connections to the US, the Trump State Department has now defined what a close family tie is.
Grandparents, grandchildren, uncles, aunts, cousins, and fiancés are not considered close enough family. And now LGBTQ family members suffering homophobic and transphobic persecution in their countries of origin have even fewer paths to refuge. Not one of the nations called out by this ban recognizes same-sex marriage: all LGBTQ partners in these nations are prohibited from entry based on spousal recognition. 1 Homosexuality is illegal in each of them, and LGBT people in them are subject to flogging, electric shock and punishment up to and including death. 2
Our partners at Forward Together issued a statement on June 29, 2017 condemning the reissued ban, noting:
In addition to legalizing discrimination through the Muslim ban, the Supreme Court’s ruling puts the task of defining family in the hands of the Trump administration thus continuing one of the most heart-wrenching practices of our immigration system – forcing families to choose which family members to sponsor based on a hierarchy of relationships determined by the State Department, not based on how their families actually work or who they want or need to bring to the US. While Trump’s new definition of family is currently limited to the Muslim ban, it is alarming to consider how this definition could create the framework for even more restricted definitions of family within our immigration system.
We couldn’t agree more. Now is the time for broader, not narrower understandings of family. We call on the Trump Administration and the State Department to halt this destructive order. And we all would do well to bear in mind this well-known, paraphrased parable: a rabbi asks, “How do we know the exact moment when night ends and day begins?” The answer: “When strangers approach, and we think of them as our brothers and sisters.”
In solidarity,
Renata Moreira Kalpana Krishnamurthy
Executive Director Senior Policy Director
Our Family Coalition Forward Together
1. Pew Research Center, Gay Marriage Around the World
2. Human Rights Watch, Equality to brutality: global trends in LGBT rights; Human Rights Watch: LGBT Country Profiles Track Shifting Terrain; Wikipedia, LGBT rights by country or territory.
