From International Film Student to Queer and Undocumented (part 4 of 5)
(This 5-part story, renamed ‘From International Film Student to Queer and Undocumented,’ originally appeared in its entirety on medium.com/@gabriellabregman as ‘Becoming Undocumented: Getting My Status and Identity Back After DOMA’s Demise’ on Dec. 12, 2015)
And the Violence Against Women Act, (originally instated in 1994 to combat abuse during the “2-year Conditional Status” required under the Immigration Marriage Fraud Amendment Act of 1986,) never applied to LGBTQ people, and definitely does not now in any “mixed-orientation marriage” which might have arisen because of LGBTQ exclusion from immigration spousal sponsorship law before DOMA article 3 was officially down in June of 2013.
Under the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 one has to prove the marriage as “bona fide” and not just for immigration purposes, in order to qualify for self-petitioning, the same as with spousal sponsorship, (and filed within 2 years after a potential divorce.)
But if VAWA was instated in 1994 as a response to domestic violence afforded by the “2-year Conditional Status” imposed under the Marriage Fraud Act of 1986, (8 years and many victims later,) then where does that leave LGBTQ people, subjected to institutionalized discrimination, at all within any of this?
Thus, what constitutes as fraud according to immigration under the Violence Against Women Act and U-Visa can often uncover physical abuse and sexual exploitation of particularly women instead.
My marriage is not fraud committed by me but women and spousal abuse as a result of, and backed up by, a patriarch controlled government and its policies.
Proving my opposite-sex marriage to be “bona fide,” real, as lesbian no less of course, and not solely for immigration purposes, under the 1986 Immigration Marriage Fraud Act, is even a requirement for self-petition under the Violence Against Women Act, and so still a post-DOMA backlash and retroactive punishment for me, as this is exactly what makes my case still difficult today.
But a forced marriage is no less “bona fide” real as a marriage as rape constitutes “bona fide” real sex, even if non-consensual.
A lot of my actual belongings, including evidence, have disappeared over the years as a result of prolonged government and domestic abuse as well, and my second husband would have loved for my original documents to have disappeared, my trail of evidence of both legality as well as moral character, not at all one and the same, and even for my endless original writings to disappear, my voice and validity forever silenced and to be used further in any manner he pleases.
If it hadn’t been for changes in the law, and the social progress and activist movements behind those, my husband would have never changed his behavior, and he has only barely changed his mind on LGBTQ validity and equality, and just as easily changes back into being a homophobe again, because he is ultimately a misogynist, and misogyny exactly is what is at the root of homophobia.
In 2013 the VAWA fortunately got restored and with much need updates included when DOMA article 3 went down on June 26 of 2013 as part of same-sex marriage legalization in the state of CA, (and after the prolonged and unconstitutional setback of Proposition 8 here.)
2013 also brought President Obama’s immigration reform announcement, as well as a most important reacquaintance with my old crush from 1998, in terms of personal development primarily, and certainly not for romance or marriage, (not that same-sex marriage for US sponsorship in my case is necessary anymore, but I would still potentially desire same-sex marriage, for love, and since June 26, 2015 in the US that is finally possible in all 50 states.)
Post-DOMA backlashes, as retroactive punishment from the government, will most definitely surface, and the irony remains that if I would have moved to the US after the summer of 2015 instead of in the summer of 1992 I would have had no real problems getting US citizenship through marriage sponsorship, just like my heterosexual counterparts have been able to do for centuries, (and despite this method as primary method entirely misguided and unfair constitutionally, trampling all over individual rights in the process.)
With Obama’s Executive Action late 2014 as response to the stalled 2013 bill, came my round two of political awareness, after enduring 2008’s Proposition 8, but with a more clear cut purpose of activism in mind this time around, and leading up to another coming out, again, not just as lesbian and gender nonconforming but now as undocumented, to the whole world, both socially and online.
In reality all this delay of comprehensive immigration reform is in anticipation of the 2016 elections, (an important one at that with the 8 year Democratic tenure of the Obama administration finally coming to an end, and feared to be replaced by the GOP.)
I had no actual income from employment and no work papers, nor health insurance, and besides was dying to live a normal, non-closeted life by now, even as undocumented, but somehow “out,” and not afraid anymore.
I haven’t had a normal human, social and love life, for 13 years now, (at least since the arrival of my husband’s family in LA in 2002, and with the brief exception of having my parents coming to see me for one last time in 2003.)
My female relations were secret, fleeting and lonely, and men continued to harass me, sexually and physically. My love life had been reduced to romanticized memories and meaningless flings because too compromised in my opposite sex marriage and my immigration status to even consider a serious same-sex relationship, while at the same time that was the one thing in my life that I wanted most, but simply not possible nor legally sanctioned under DOMA.
I have become a different person since my homelessness, but it’s also miracle that I’m still alive today.
In 2014 racial profiling in California was discouraged by the Secure Communities Act going down, courtesy of governor Jerry Brown, as well as more good news for undocumented immigrants with the start of California drivers licenses being issued in January 2015.
And 2 years to the day it happened in California in 2013, on June 26 2015 same-sex marriage finally became federal law in all 50 states, (11 long years after Massachusetts was the first state in the US to allow it in 2004.)
During my 7 years of homeless, from 2003 through 2010, The L Word had just premiered in the early 2000s, (when I first became homeless,) and was having a very successful run and I had been made visible for the first time in my entire life, especially through androgynous looking and acting character like “Shane,” and to a smaller extent “Max/Moira,” which actually helped me out a lot, and I got hooked, often having to watch the episodes on YouTube the day after they aired on TV by fans who illegally and very temporarily uploaded them, giving me only twenty four hours to rush to public internet access and catch the show.
On better days I’d catch it on some cheap motel’s HBO, and I even occasionally took the Greyhound back up to Hollywood to watch the show with cast and crew in attendance at the viewing parties put up at Falcon Bar on Sunset Boulevard, usually rushing back to Chula Vista on the very same night, so as not to agitate my husband.
It was literally the first time ever that I’d seen people on TV who more or less looked and acted like me, explaining a lot of my identity, and my resulting situation, to me, (minus any focus on being undocumented obviously.)
Maybe with the exceptions of a few independent films, featuring Lili Taylor’s character in ‘I Shot Andy Warhol,’ and Hilary Swank as Brandon Teena in ‘Boys Don’t Cry,’ trans- and gender nonconforming identity awareness was still pretty scarce.
And LGBTQ internet visibility was still scarce even in the mid-2000s, and so my self-awareness as a result still pretty dim, as a male-gendered/ gender nonconforming lesbian, and I hadn’t rushed to read any women studies in college, or embrace feminism immediately upon discovery neither, as these were all long, slow and painful awakenings.
But all of a sudden I was very noticeable to other lesbians as well, which definitely didn’t hurt, in terms of romantic and sexual relations. No one ever even suspected I was homeless, since I always appeared and was clean, showering and working out daily at 24 Hour Fitness, maintaining my membership along with a few other, basic bills, like phone and internet, and wearing clothes I had bought from before becoming homeless, several Diesel jackets and skinny Levi’s and a lot of Adidas gear.
I ultimately cut all my relationships short though, due mainly to having become undocumented in 1994/1997, before and during the Defense Of Marriage Act of 1996 that is, federal government discrimination in the form of exclusion-policies, and having become a victim of opposite-sex, male domestic violence, resulting in homelessness exactly.
A lot of lesbians thought I was behaving like a “Shane” instead, being a player basically, whenever I cut my relations with them prematurely short and without explanation, while that behavior is in reality far from my personal character, and having to continuously lose out on love, and hurting others in the process, hurt me a great deal, and became ultimately one of the main reasons for coming forward with undocumented status in mid-2015, in particular a flirting old crush from my semi-stable working days in 1998, who took me in and treated me like I was at home for the first time in my life.
I came out of the shadows in July of 2015, after 23 years here, and because of this woman, Zoe, because of how wide the gap in our friendship of 1998 had become when we got briefly reacquainted with each other in early 2013, and she found out all of these secrets about me, my undocumented status, and gender nonconforming and lesbian identities, and my feelings for her, all of which I had only hinted at when I briefly lived with her in late 1998, and all of which she seemed to approve of then, but strongly rejected now.
After that I felt the need to explain myself, since I hadn’t tried to come back her into her life at all and our reacquaintance was entirely coincidental, but she moved on quickly and broke my heart. I certainly hadn’t realized back then what a gigantic task and burden it would become to “come out of the shadows,” and stay “out” from there on, as undocumented in the US. This complication of events also messed up my trying to work out a relationship with a new woman, who left me upon finding out about this past.
It took me at least another 2 brokenhearted years to properly prepare myself for this life altering “confession,” (even though I’ve done nothing wrong, and immigrated here absolutely legally,) for once you’re out as undocumented you are decidedly not “one of us” anymore, but all of a sudden “one of them,” an extremely alienating experience after having experienced the US as my home for most of my life, and yet I’ve always been quietly aware I wasn’t truly ever “one of us” of course.
So, still stuck in my abusive, opposite-sex dead-end marriage by the time of witnessing same-sex marriage become federal law, I decided it was finally time to spell it out, and 2 weeks later on July 9 I came out fully, socially as well as online, as “Queer and Undocumented.”
After the initial high of not having to feel like a ghost of my former self anymore I had to come to terms with the fact that I gave up my privilege with it as well, the illusion of privilege anyway but which had kept me financially alive, the illusion of the privilege of being seemingly well-adjusted to American “culture,” or whatever passes for it, (meaning basically speaking English without a foreign accent.)
I had now empowered myself and further alienated myself at the same time, an emotional burden had been lifted and I had become more visible but with it felt more vulnerable as well, and I was plagued by uncertainties regarding my future, regarding love as well as a roof over my head, simply income.
In early November of 2015 my father passed away, knowing I was out and becoming proud of me himself after years of reluctance, from both my parents, and my mother even more so.
My father died of a heart attack, (the last of several,) in the same hospital in the town of Leiderdorp where I was born, which might have very likely flashed through his memory before he passed. We were fairly close, considering our distance geographically and our difference in opinions, though were also similar.
Because of my undocumented status I was unable to attend the funeral but I did get to write his eulogy, fittingly as a writer.
He had even joked about a week before how close to Hollywood he in a sense was, being he had just been hospitalized next to Los Angeles based Dutch director Jan De Bont’s brother.
My parents got to witness my transition from artist to activist. My father encouraged me to stay on in the US to continue my fight for full equality under the law.
The fact remains today that without a pathway to US citizenship as the single most highest priority in any attempt at fair and comprehensive immigration reform, one simply cannot only be an individual person and immigrate legally and stay legally to live and work in the US.
Such a pathway or line does not exist, and there is no “real” line for family, and only a “broken” line to nowhere for employees.
To not have the individual right to pursue income, like not having the individual right to keep one’s earnings, is a real form of slavery.
The US has also never been transparent regarding the fact that any work visa at all, low or high skilled, does not lead to US citizenship in this immigration system so that most people can only rely on one thing realistically if they want to be and stay here legally and that is marriage, and heterosexual exclusively that is.
It is specifically therefore also that I am pinpointing my personal situation down to DOMA, claiming that if it hadn’t been for LGBTQ exclusion from marriage, and so immigration sponsorship, I would not have been in this situation, undocumented.
If same-sex marriage would have been legal all along, if LGBTQ would have had full equality under the law all along, if the Violence Against Women Act existed to from the beginning of the Marriage Fraud Act, and had included LGBTQ people, I would not have become “illegal,” undocumented.
Men could have still harassed me of course, and probably would have, but if I would have been legally validated as LGBTQ person and woman from the start I at least would have had legal recourse to protect and defend myself.
And so now, going into 2016 openly “out” as “queer and undocumented,” without the right to pursue income, which in actuality is slavery, I feel the need to bring attention to the hypocrisy of the Immigration Marriage Fraud Amendment Act of 1986, with its’ 2-year “Conditional Status” requirement for foreign spouses, allowing for an enormous amount of control and power in the hands of the US citizen spouse in charge of the sponsorship, and in reality practically setting things up for abuse and violence to be able to take place.
No one wants to talk about this, and the narrative has only ever been brought up in the media in extreme and negative terms, continuously blaming the “scheming and gold digging foreigner” of taking advantage of the “innocent and hardworking American.”
Marriage fraud and domestic violence are simply not part of the immigration conversation, and I feel this really needs to change. Forced marriages exist and are real, and already severely compromised people, people fleeing violence and persecution and poverty, are not hard to be forced to begin with.
(One has to always view the overall history of something to even get close to understanding the big picture, for example such one simple, harsh fact as even the idea of marital rape as a real and punishable thing only becoming a reality as late as 1993 in the US itself. Before that it was simply assumed that men had legal sexual access to their wives, and consent simply was not necessary, as the “I do” promise should have covered it.)
The Immigration Marriage Fraud Act Amendment of 1986, (enacted by the Reagan administration in 1986 after the last big “reform” to date, legalizing some 3 millions immigrants at the time,) is an unfair, rigorous and ultimately dangerous law for even heterosexual people, and women within that in particular, but for LGBTQ people during the existence of DOMA, amounted to nothing less than LGBTQ abuse; an opening in the law for LGBTQ- and women’s abuse to take place, (for at least those first 2 years after the American spouse has filed the application for citizenship sponsorship, up until the foreign spouse’s “Conditional Status” is removed by immigration through an interview.)
Or as in my case with my husband not sponsoring at all the abuse can go on indefinitely, and specifically because the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, the only defense existing against abusive marriages under immigration, had never qualified for LGBTQ people before, (and only does for same-sex marriage couples since 2013.)
But the Marriage Fraud Act of 1986 punishes those LGBTQ immigrants who specifically became victims of abusive, heterosexual US citizen spouses, (that is really specifically lesbians married to American men,) in “mixed orientation” marriages (where one of the spouses is heterosexual, the other homosexual.)
And it also punished any LGBTQ American who happened to fall in love with a foreigner of course.
How does a government even define marriage fraud when it cannot even accurately define marriage, and thinks of it exclusively in heterosexual, heteronormative terms, as the union of one man and one woman, and ultimately for the purposes of procreation?
So ultimately I realized that I am specifically a “victim of my time in LGBTQ history,” for if I had come here, to California, after DOMA article 3 went down in 2013, or anywhere in the US after DOMA went down in all 50 states in 2015, I would have had really no problems studying, marrying who I wanted legally, and working, under spousal law immigration.
End of Part 4.
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For a Summary of this Story, Click the Link Below:
The Queer Case for Individual Rights: From International Film Student to Queer and Undocumented (2015)
For Parts 1 Through 5 of this 5-Part Story, Click the Links Below:
From International Film Student to Queer and Undocumented (part 1 of 5) (2017)
From International Film Student to Queer and Undocumented (part 2 of 5) (2017)
From International Film Student to Queer and Undocumented (part 3 of 5) (2017)
From International Film Student to Queer and Undocumented (part 4 of 5)(2017)
From International Film Student to Queer and Undocumented (part 5 of 5) (2017)
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My name is Gabriella Bregman, I am a Hollywood-based Writer, Filmmaker and Producer, currently in production of a Feature Documentary about LGBTQ US-Immigration Exclusion-Policy, including my personal story of US immigration discrimination during DOMA, (Defense Of Marriage Act, of 1996–2015,) titled ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights,’ through my film production company Bregman Films.
The 2001 John Cassavetes Film Retrospective ‘Gena and John: A Cassavetes Retrospective’ at the Laemmle Theatres in Los Angeles is a Bregman Films Production.
I am also the Founder of a Nonprofit Film Organization Queer Female Filmmakers Los Angeles — A Media Site & LA Film Mixers (2018.)
In 2018 I am publishing my story and essays in a book, titled ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights & Other Essays.’
I identify as a Gender Nonconforming Lesbian, “non-op” Trans-Masculine, and Bi-Racial, from the Netherlands, Los Angeles-based.
My pronouns are: they/them/theirs.
Please check out my other articles on LGBTQ- and Immigration Issues, the State of Women and LGBTQ People in Film, and Lesbian/Queer Film as well as Queer Female Sexuality and Gender Identity at medium.com/@gabriellabregman
A few titles:
Resume/FILM BIO: Gabriella Bregman (2018) (2018)
2018 Update on Documentary ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights’ (2018)
A Note on the State of Women in Film (2016)
A Few Notes On LGBTQ Filmmaking (2017)
Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 1 of 5) (2018)
John Cassavetes Film Retrospective (2001) (2018)
On ‘Moonlight’ and the Subject of Positive Representation (2017)
My 2018 Oscar Pick for Best Picture (2018)
In Defense of Rationality (2018)
In Defense of Individual Rights (2018)
A Few Notes on US Immigration Exclusion Policies Towards Women- and LGBTQ Immigrants (2014)
The Root Cause Of Misogyny, And The Necessity Of Free Will (Gender Binary System notes, part 1 of 7) (2016)
The Male And Female Brain, And The “Cause” Of Transgenderism (Gender Binary System notes, part 2 of 7) (2016)
The Gender-Binary System Was Created For Population Control And Slavery, Including Sex Slavery (Gender Binary System notes, part 7 of 7)
All Articles Written by Gabriella Bregman (TM). All Pictures Owned by Gabriella Bregman (TM). All Rights Reserved (2018)
