Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed an immigration reform bill that did not include language from the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA), which would have allowed same-sex couples equal access to spousal/partner immigration privileges. So much for the sinister Democratic plot to use equality to kill immigration reform for their union friends.
The plot was apparently as ineffective as it was absurd. Ruben Navarrette claimed that “Democrats thought of everything, even having the task of amending the bill fall to a senator from Vermont, a state where … Latinos account for just 1.6 percent of the population?”
The aforementioned Vermont senator is Patrick Leahy, whose 39 years in the Senate gain him the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, making amendments his prerogative. So as President Reagan signed his Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, Democrats knew we’d need another in 27 years, and were maneuvering Leahy into just the right spot for 2013? That’s right up there with Barack Obama’s parents faking a Hawaiian birth certificate on the off-chance he might need proof of citizenship for a presidential run.
Still, if Leahy hadn’t been there, who could possibly have proposed including the immigration bill-killing LGBT protections and survived the forecast Latino backlash? It would have to be someone from a marriage equality state, with a less than 5 percent Latino population who won with nearly 65 percent of the vote and isn’t up for re-election until 2018. I give you Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a member of the Judiciary Committee.
So what does it mean that Leahy and Klobuchar didn’t propose the UAFA language? Is there a right-wing conspiracy to break up President Obama’s progressive coalition by driving a wedge between the Latino, immigrant and LGBT communities?
My guess is that we’ll hear a lot about that sinister plot in the next few days, and it doesn’t make any more sense than the first one. There are no doubt some conservatives looking forward to the infighting, but I doubt they were able to enlist Leahy and Klobuchar. If reports that the White House pressured Leahy not to propose the UAFA amendment are true, President Obama would have to be an even less likely co-conspirator.
So here’s a crazy thought – maybe it’s not a plot. What if Leahy, who has a string of 100 percent scores from the Human Rights Campaign and whose state has marriage equality, was planning to add the UAFA language because he thought it was the right thing to do? What if he decided not to because he feared it would kill the immigration reform bill?
My undocumented LGBT friends deal with the same agonizing choice in a deeply personal way. They are torn as individuals and divided as a group. Some would wait longer for a path to citizenship that didn’t relegate their sexual orientation to second class status.
Others would prefer to have protection against deportation now, and try to add the LGBT protections later. None are involved in a plot, except perhaps to avoid judgment and retribution in favor of working together.
That’s a conspiracy we would all be wise to join for the long legislative road ahead.
