Gay marriage and queer immigration: Laboring over love

The recent California decision on gay marriage fills me with dread—dread at the schlock I know is awaiting me during this Pride month and afterwards; dread about hearing all the triumphant rhetoric about “equality;” and dread that queers are going to speak about marriage as some kind of dream fulfilled. Again.
Because, of course, marriage will solve all our problems. No health care? Get married! Laid off? Get married! Struggling to pay bills and survive another month? Get married! Don't believe in marriage or that marriage should be the only way to gain health care and other benefits? Suck it up and start believing!

We queers have a unique ability to forget about the after—as in: What happens after “marriage equality”? Will our workplaces be better? Will we be less vulnerable to layoffs? Will our unmarried friends and neighbors have health insurance? Will the lives of our married but uninsured friends and neighbors be any better with the legalization of gay marriage?

These questions preoccupied me as I watched the “gay movement” take up a cause in a cynical bid to further the idea that gay marriage/gay coupledom matters above all: Immigration. In this year's Chicago May Day march, gay groups joined together to form an official queer contingent.

Watching and talking to several of the key organizers of the contingent, I was struck by the great differences between queers who claimed to fight for immigration and queers who are themselves queer immigrants. For queer immigrants, immigration had to do with the rights of the undocumented. Many of them have friends and families who couldn't attend the march without consequences in their workplaces, and who faced deportation after recent raids. This year's march focused on the legalization of the undocumented and workers' rights.

To be fair, many non-immigrants, especially younger queers, understood the key issues. But others were fixated on an issue that has nothing to do with the undocumented and even less with workers' rights: binational couples. According to them, gay couples should be able to sponsor their partners for immigration like married heterosexuals. In fact, this does nothing for the undocumented—citizenship via marriage is only available to the documented.

http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=18447

It is still a valid and important issue for many people. I personally know people who need such pairity in law. It is not just according to them, as you say, it is a matter of basic equality. How many heterosexual couples have you met that met in the country of one of them, married and lived in the country of the other, or remained in the first? I've known dozens of them. Barack Obama's parents spring to mind at once.
I'm wondering why you think this is something that should be only for straight folks, likes say, Warren Jeffs, and not for gay folk, like say, me? Specifically why.
I'm also wondering why you think all immigration issues involve the undocumented? That is AN issue. It is not THE issue. In fact, equity and fairness of immigration law is one of the major factors that can decrease those who are undocumented, by making the documentation available in a just and timely manner to all who qualify. I know personally people who are couples, and one is undocumented and the other a natural born citizen. If they were able to marry, that would instantly document the other. Straight folk do it all the time, for love and for money by the by. I find it really amazing that you assume the issues are not related, and that one of them is not valid. Immigration laws should first and foremost serve the citizens of the hosting nation. Those laws should not prevent our citizens from freely making parterships and living with their chosen spouses in this nation if they so desire.
Worker's rights? I've never known a gay cople who were not workers. Do they not count as workers and share in the rights and issues of workers everywhere.
And since when did bringing attention to an actual real world issue mean one is saying that issue matters above all else? You said that.
In terms of Immigration rights for gay couples, this last year has seen the failure of both of our Democratic candidates to support the Uniting American Families Act, which would have addressed the dispairity and inequity in the law. So not only is this an actual issue, it is a current events issue, and one that is on the minds of many people this year.
Equality in Immigration law is just one facet of the equality issue, and a small part of the immigration discussion. But one does not exclude the other, just as, I am sure to your amazment, being GLBT does not exclude also being undocumented, nor does it exclude being a worker. I have known dozens and dozens of undocumented GLBT workers. All of them would benefit from immigration equality. Yes, that's right, Mexican wetback Queers, wanting to settle down with some nice gabacho they met in Manhattan Beach one day, but lacking in leagal standing to either marry (too gay) or to work (too Mexican) and having to remain outlaws for love!
I just find it so outside of my experience, this persumed division you see between the two issues. There is muy crossover. I myself have had two boyfrieds named Fransisco and that is just one name and one gringo! They were both freaking workers though. Neither one lived off of inherited wealth, although one did have a nice van he got when his tio died....workers. Gay. Latino. Chicano, even, if you can handle that.
Undocumented maricones united against La Migra!