Trump Threatens LGBTQ Immigrants

Donald Trump’s victory spells certain setbacks for LGBTQ rights, and it’s a double whammy for LGBTQ immigrants.

“Make no mistake,” advises Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the oldest Hispanic civil-rights organization in the United States. “Mass deportations will harm the millions targeted by Donald Trump, the families and communities they are part of, and every person in our country. They will rip parents from their children, destroy businesses and livelihoods, and devastate the fabric of our nation and our economy.”

Proaño reveals that his organization is in the process of securing funding and legal staff to fight what they anticipate will be “vicious, malevolent, cruel, and ruthless” immigration policies.

Colorado governor Jared Polis, a gay married man with children, has become a Trump target because of Polis’ determination to enforce Colorado laws that forbid state and local law enforcement from collaborating with ICE agents who are in Colorado to investigate and apprehend illegal immigrants. While Polis has stated that he supports efforts to address the problems of an overburdened immigration system, he warns that the current work visa system falls drastically short of meeting the demand for hospitality and agricultural workers. That system is partly responsible for the large number of people who cross our southern border to fill jobs that are waiting for them. Without these essential workers, says Polis, Colorado’s economic health is in danger.

Houston immigration attorney Raed Gonzalez Olivieri explains that word spreads quickly among immigrant workers in the US and their relatives south of the border. In Mexico, he says, they had been making $3 a week; now they are working in the US with a weekly paycheck of $500. That leaves little motivation for undergoing the long process—sometimes as long as two years—to negotiate the visa procedure, with no guarantee of approval.

John Nechman, who also practices immigration law in Houston, agrees that illegal immigration is primarily a function of labor supply and demand. “There are no visas available for people to do this legally,” he asserts. “There are jobs in the US that people in this country don’t want to do. So they come up and take them because we need these jobs filled. But now the new administration will blame them for every ill of society and try to deport them and make them evil.

“I’m sure if people had a legal way to go to their consulates in El Salvador, Honduras, or Mexico and apply for these jobs, they would do it in a heartbeat. But we have a broken immigration system. I don’t know any immigration attorney who says that we shouldn’t have control over who comes into the country. But we need to be able to recognize what our labor needs are and have a way to fulfill those needs in a legal way. But it doesn’t happen, because the two political parties can’t agree on what to do.”

Nechman thinks back to the amnesty that President Reagan initiated in the early 1980s. “He talked about the beauty of immigration to this country and the beauty of those coming up to do work here and the fact that we need to have laws that are fair. President George W. Bush was very much that way, too.

“We’re getting nonstop calls from clients,” Nechman adds. “Even clients who I’d say are relatively safe are worried about their circumstances. Every immigrant potentially has reasons to be concerned, but if you have any kind of a legal issue with regard to your immigration status, this is the time to talk to an attorney. There is only a short time left before Trump takes office. We still have an immigration agency that’s run under the Biden administration—one that runs with more of a slant toward trying to do the right thing. Once Trump takes office, we’re going to see every single executive order regarding immigration that Biden put into place reversed.

“One of the first things that I want to know from a prospective client,” says Nechman, “is if they came into the country legally or if they came in without permission. If they came in legally, they have options open to them. If they didn’t come in legally, so many doors are closed, but they may still have options. It’s just that we’ve got to determine if they have any kind of a route. The basic rule is that if you didn’t come in legally, then you can’t get a change in your status in the US, because you never had a status to begin with. And that is probably 75% of the people who are not legally here now.”

It appears that the only choice is to leave the US and apply for a visa, which would trigger a ban of up to ten years before becoming eligible to apply. That is what makes “doing it right” not at all appealing. Even leaving the US as an illegal and then applying for a visa is not likely to succeed. There are lots of ways to prove a person has been living in the US. “Anybody who’s here who is not legally present in the US,” emphasizes Nechman, “needs to be really watching their back.

“If we went to any restaurant right now,” says Nechman, “the ones bussing the tables and the ones cleaning the dishes in the kitchen and some who are cooking are almost always Guatemalan, Honduran, or El Salvadoran, and even if they have papers, they’re fake.”

As for the coming immigration policies enacted by Trump, Nechman predicts they will have an adverse effect on the Houston economy, just as Colorado’s Governor Polis has asserted will happen in his state. “Mass deportation,” he declares, “will decimate the restaurant, hospitality, and construction industries.”