| Brown
and Queer
Queer issues are immigration issues for the
South Asian community
Los Angeles - For Amin, a mental health counselor
living in Southern California, being gay and South Asian has everything
to do with immigration. That’s because Amin was granted asylum
to the United States for fear of persecution for his sexual orientation
in his native Pakistan.
Like many South Asians, Amin came to the United
States as a child with his parents. Amin and his family overstayed
their business visa and lived undocumented for many years. “It
was when I started working with our college gay and lesbian center
during undergrad that I learned I might be eligible for asylum,”
Amin says.
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| But asylum cases based
on sexual orientation are hard won. “Being gay is not something
you can visually prove,” says Amin, who used articles he published
in his school newspaper describing the struggles of being Muslim
and gay to help win his case.
Last month, the South Asian queer community and
its allies gathered in San Francisco for the DesiQ conference. More
than 150 people attended the four-day convention to discuss a range
of issues facing the community, network and provide a supportive
environment for people often marginalized at home. The conference
came to a close on June 25 the day of the San Francisco Gay Pride
Parade where over 50 DesiQ attendees rode or walked alongside a
colorful float that recreated the set of Bollywood film Mughal-e-Azam.
One of the topics DesiQ engaged with is the United
States immigration ban on HIV positive people. According to the
New York-based Queer Immigrant Rights Project (QuIR), people who
test HIV positive, with very few exceptions, are barred from even
entering the United States. The advocacy group also argues that
restrictive laws keep many LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-gendered)
people from sponsoring their same-sex partners for visas and claiming
citizenship through committed relationships.
But openly gay Congressman Jim Kolbe (R., Ariz.) told the New
York Blade that pushing gay issues in the immigration reform
debate would only add “baggage.” “The immigration
debate is so heavily laden and so fraught with so many issues that
adding one like this into it is not terribly practical,” he
told reporters on July 6. The Blade reports that Kolbe
is in a relationship with a man from Panama who is in the United
States on a temporary visa.
Hrishikesh Sathawane, co-chair of Trikone, the San Francisco South
Asian LGBT group that hosted DesiQ, agrees that gay marriage is
the first battle that needs to be won.
“It is an umbrella issue that involves a
lot of other things,” says the 32-year-old gay advocate from
Bombay. Health benefits, adoption, property transfers and even visitation
rights at hospitals are the kinds of opportunities that are predicated
on marital status. “If we had gay marriage, we wouldn’t
have to struggle so much.”
Thus the opening plenary of the conference focused on marriage
equality and the theme carried over to many discussions throughout
the weekend. While gay marriage is a right sought by most all LGBT
people, it has specific consequences and meaning in the South Asian
experience.
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“There is still a lot of resistance from the
[South Asian] community for even the concept of being gay or lesbian,”
says Joyti Chand, Community Organizer for the Los Angeles-based
South Asian Network (SAN). “Often people don’t know
anybody who is a part of the queer community”.
But for Chand, being queer is not about defining sexuality in the
rigid terms "gay or straight." Chand, an immigrant of
South Asian descent from Fiji, wants to push the limits and broaden
the sexual orientation debate to go beyond the sexual acts people
choose, to the defining traits of human sexuality. She identifies
as queer despite being in a heterosexual marriage.
“It’s about acknowledging for myself that my sexuality
is fluid,” she says.
In 2003, SAN established an advisory committee
to tackle the issues faced by this broad community, what they called
LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, inter-sex, queer
and questioning). “We wanted to challenge our staff and build
our resources around health access and combating domestic partner
violence,” says Chand.
The SAN staff spent three days in a workshop talking
openly about the pressures, hardships and marginalization the LGBTIQ
community faces, which, according to Chand, made all the difference
in opening people's minds: “A lot of the story telling challenges
resistance. Now our staff really sees this as a part of the social
justice movement and is really interested in moving forward.”
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| But according to Prajna
Choudhury, an LGBTIQ advocate who served as a consultant to SAN
in their efforts, organizations looking to take the jump into LGBTIQ
rights issues often face many challenges. She argues that queer
women are more likely than queer men to go beyond issues of identity
and to work toward change because women are more scrutinized.
“Men have more access to public space in
a South Asian context,” says Choudhury.“Whatever he
does in his private space is his business, but society gives a lot
less leeway to women.” For Choudhury, who came out to her
parents 12 years ago, it is still very awkward to face the perpetual
questions from the Bengali community: ‘Are you married?’,
‘Are you interested in finding someone?’
The awkward moments and constant scrutiny take a toll on Choudhury.
Originally from the East Coast, she still doesn’t feel comfortable
coming out to the Bengali community in Los Angeles. “Growing
up, my culture was so important to me. I spoke my language and was
engaged in my community.” But life has changed for Choudhury:
“Now my [Bengali] culture is limited to the foods that I cook
and as something personal that I do behind the closed doors of my
home.”
She says that while organizations like Trikone and Satrang are
great support networks for the queer community, their scopes are
limited to broad cultural norms rather than unique regional experiences.
“I want to see South Asian communities be a place where South
Asian queer communities can come home to,” says Choudhury,
who maintains hope that the proud South Asian tradition of uprising
against oppression and civil disobedience will one day bring rights
and justice to the queer community.
With funding from the Liberty Hill Foundation, SAN is working with
Satrang, an LGBTIQ social and political organization, to assess
the health and wellness needs of the queer community. A report on
their findings is expected to be completed near the end of this
year.
Even as Amin waits and struggles for American citizenship, he believes
that the struggle for full rights and acceptance for Desi queers
will continue to grow in momentum, as allies and organizations become
more willing to stand up to resistance from the larger South Asian
community.
“Visibility is everything,” says Amin
“The more we gain exposure, the more we tell our story, the
more we will be accepted." The irony for Amin is that he is
still, in many ways, hiding his identity; his attorney suggested
that his real name not be published for fear of damaging his case
for citizenship.
Sara D. Sadhwani lives in Southern California and is the policy coordinator for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.
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