With California officially out of the running for most liberal state, given last week's ban on gay marriage, Vermont seems poised to capture the title and embrace the hailstorm of political opposition that comes with being the rule breaker. A bill being debated in Congress this week originally submitted by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is shaking things up a bit more on the two fronts that seem to generate the most outrage and passion: immigration and gay marriage.
If the new bill becomes law, foreign-born same-sex partners of American citizens and legal immigrants would be given the same priority for green cards extended to legal spouses of opposite-sex couples.
Leahy has said his bill should be part of any broad immigration legislation that Congress considers. Sure Senator, this one falls right up there with border fences for the republicans.
The political fallout from the new bill was swift and threatens to fracture Roman Catholic and evangelical Christian churches from the immigration reform coalition that also includes Latino and black groups, farm workers and commercial farmers, organized labor, some employer groups, and the ever-more-relevant Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, the chairman of the Catholic bishops’ Committee on Migration, wrote in a letter that the effort to extend the main channel for legal immigration to the United States to gays and lesbians would “erode the institution of marriage and family.” After all, the only thing worse than gay marriage is gay illegals getting married. On the bright side, wedding coordinators would likely embrace having new color schemes to work with.
The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, also publicly ridiculed the bill, calling the efforts to use immigration reform to advance gay rights a “slap in the face to those of us who have fought for years for immigration reform.”
Senator Leahy’s bill would add the term “permanent partner” to the provision in current immigration law that refers to married heterosexual couples - a convenience we speculate stemmed from personal experience on the part of lawmakers.
It is important to note that the U.S. would not be the first country to give green card rights to same-sex couples in that manner; 19 other countries already provide such benefits, including Canada, France, and Germany.
Regardless, opponents of the bill argue that it would increase immigration fraud because it would be difficult for immigration officers to determine whether same-sex couples have an established relationship, a challenge officials already face when dealing with fraudulent marriages-for-green-cards. They clearly have never watched "I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry."
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