The Problem and Solution to Illegal Immigration in the US (part 1–3)
(NOTE: This Article has been Republished in 3 Parts. Click Here for Part 1. Click Here for Part 2. And Click Here for Part 3.)
The 11 million undocumented immigrants currently residing in the US are not one solid group standing in solidarity with each other but are comprised of roughly two groups, of about 5 and a half million each.
It is the legislation known as DACA that has divided the groups in terms of prioritizing “Illegal Entries” for work permits over the “Legal Entries,” who actually paid to come and work here legally, which is highly unfair to all of those who have spent a lot of money, passed English tests and medical exams, paid for private health insurance, waited in line for their visas, entered themselves into the US database, paid for their airfare and entered the country legally.
It is DACA recipients themselves who along with immigration activist lawyers have devised this legislation, (previously known as the DREAM-Act,) not the US government, who was only pressured into accepting it, and for the most part did not, taking their cue from a very special Deferred Action case applied to John Lennon, who obviously immigrated to the US under a whole different set of circumstances and had always been eligible if it wasn’t for the Nixon administration trying to thwart his peace activism. He was the original “Dreamer.”
The DACA recipients themselves however did not come to the US legally, nor under a Extraordinary Ability clause, which applied to Lennon, and have devised this legislation along with lawyers in order to serve their “Illegal Entry” cases only, while at the same time continuously speaking of the number of undocumented immigrants being 11 million total, a conveniently big number to hide behind, in an argument along the lines of “you can’t deport us all, we are too many, and too strong in numbers.”
In reality they have forced, by drawing attention to themselves in the media, towards the US public as well as the government, to shed light on the rest of us who are “Legal Entries,” and fall within the total 11 million. Over 40% of all undocumented immigrants initially entered the country legally, and are therefore not eligible for this DACA program, providing temporary relief from deportation and a work permit and travel permission.
The “Legal Entries” have now become vulnerable for deportation, while the “Illegal Entries” have legislation in place, which they keep pushing to go through the court system for themselves only, in effect throwing some 5 and a half “Legal Entry” immigrants under the bus, who in fact have stood in line, in their home countries, as is custom, paid their fees and pay income taxes, to do everything by the rules. I am one of those “Legal Entries.”
I have tried to reason with several DACA recipients on standing in solidarity, as they so often profess themselves, but they don’t want to stand with the “Legal Entries” in a true conversation about US immigration, fearing most likely that to have a rational conversation around the subject of illegal immigration, rather than make emotional pleas to ill-informed people, would expose their actions as less valid, which is not my intention. If you’re going to quote the number 11 million, you must stand with each other in finding a solution towards legalization for all, is my reasoning. Their actions endanger the rest of us, especially the LGBTQ community amongst us, traditionally always the most vulnerable of the group and in the vast minority, as if this makes our fight for legal rights less valid, which it does not.
In fact, some liberal Americans have already been convinced by the “Illegal Entries” that their fight is more valid than those of the “Legal Entry DOMA Victims,” which they consider a fringe issue, and they’ve even claimed that “Illegal Entries” should be prioritized over “Legal Entry” LGBTQ people based on their length of stay here, which first of all has nothing to do with legal rights, morality does, and which secondly gives them the false sense that LGBTQ people are new in this country, which is truly a preposterous notion.
Obviously LGBTQ people have existed as long as heterosexual people, just oppressed by them, conversely have immigrated for just as long, and in this country since the beginning of Ellis Island, and there were most likely LGBTQ people amongst the settlers and colonialists themselves.
What they also seem to overlook is that the denial of same-sex marriage has not only affected LGBTQ immigrants but LGBTQ US Citizens, obviously. DOMA was not an exclusive immigration issue at all but an American issue of “second class citizenship” for American born LGBTQ people.
It just so happens than the only mode for legal immigration to the US is marriage, and so consequently DOMA became an immigration issue as well, for LGBTQ foreigners wanting to legally immigrate to the US, but also for LGBTQ Americans who wanted to marry foreigners and were excluded from sponsoring their foreign born partners for US Citizenship, under this Defense Of Marriage Act of 1996, (and any legislation before this in a long history of LGBTQ inequality in the US.)
Many LGBTQ bi-national couples were forced to separate or move out of the US in exile and wait for DOMA to be overturned, with obviously real consequences for LGBTQ US Citizens, who should never be forced to leave their own countries in order to be with their loved ones.
In my homecountry of the Netherlands, where same-sex marriage was legalized in 2001, 14 years before the US followed, bi-national American and Dutch LGBTQ couples marrying there were so common there was a name for them and an organization built around their struggles, the “love-exiles.”
If “Illegal Entry” foreigners do not wish to be separated from their US Citizen family, which seems a massive motivating factor in their reasons for wanting to stay and a recurrent theme in news media coverage of their problems, they should conversely keep the DOMA Victims in mind who were forced to “choose” between separation or exile, and not discriminate against us on the basis that we are LGBTQ or came here legally, unlike them.
(There are LGBTQ members amongst the “Illegal Entries” themselves even but they are technically refugees, not DOMA victims, as in order to be processed for Adjustment-Of-Status from within the US through marriage, it is required one entered to US legally on proper documents. I have sympathy for them over all heterosexual “Illegal Entries” though, since it is hard to file for asylum based on sex-discrimination, which LGBTQ issues fall under, and most of them were brought here as small children, so were not in fact forced to move based on being LGBTQ. This is a separate issue however, to be taken serious, but does not fall under the issue of “Legal Entry DOMA Victims” I am addressing here.)
“Legal Entries” and “Illegal Entries” are official US Immigration Policy terms, based on whether an individual entered the country with inspection and real and valid documentation, or without, and are as such not in any way racist slurs. “Illegal Entries” are sometimes referred to as “border crossers,” and “Legal Entries” as “Visa overstays,” but only the term “illegals” is a politically incorrect terms, and indiscriminately used by the media to refer to all 11 undocumented immigrants alike, “Legal Entries” included. That is not to say the media does not put a racist slant on all things immigration towards people of Latin American countries in particular.
I am merely clarifying terminology, and personally do not appreciate the current term “undocumented,” as I paid a lot of money for my real and existing documents, including the 5-year Student Visa, by enrolling in a Film Program at a Los Angeles college for several semesters up front and at out-of-state tuition rates, a California ID, Social Security Number, Adjustment-Of-Status and temporary work permit upon opposite-sex marriage to a US Citizen, a plane ticket from the Netherlands, where I am from and health insurance for one year. One can not simply pay for a Green Card or US Citizenship, unless qualifying as a famous person basically or through an investor Visa. All other immigrant visas are by quotas, in which Latin American immigrants are actually favored, unless one applies for a non-immigrant student Visa first, or simply overstays a Tourist Visa.
I was forced into an opposite-sex marriage at the age of 19 by an older classmate, one of the co-writers of the first “Fast and Furious” film, initials E.B., as so not to incriminate the other two writers, after he sexually assaulted me at school, where he was also a film student at the time. And I was not able to re-adjust my status after our divorce in 1994, basically through same-sex marriage, as a (trans-masculine but not entirely transgender or in need of transitioning) gender nonconforming lesbian, due to DOMA. The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 under which I am now self-petitioning did not yet exist during our marriage.
Men, the insecure ones that is, have only ever attacked me, whether just verbally or sexually or physically, based on an idea that I was “acting like a man,” and therefore somehow threatened heir own sense of masculinity and was therefore in need of some sort of correction of my behavior through abuse from them exactly. In this I have still considered myself lucky, since most women get attacked on the basis of “acting like a woman,” as being a female-bodied individual is a no-win situation when it comes to insecure, abusive men.
My opposite-sex marriage was a forced relationship from the start, and besides this I was in the US perfectly legal, long-term and with the possibility of a Visa extension and work eligibility, and so certainly not in need of permanent immigration just yet. I was also certainly not in need of a man and made that perfectly clear through my masculine behavior, and the way I dressed in male clothing, should have turned many a heterosexual man off. I never did understand why men felt the need to pick up on me, especially after often mistaking me for a young guy in the beginning, but I guess some men will stop at nothing.
If college women make good prey, and they clearly do, especially when drunk, then foreign college students make for especially good victims, as our legal rights are different under the law, eve if we are legal. Being drunk is no excuse for assault and I was certainly stone cold sober and editing my Super 8 short film in the school editing room when the first assault happened. His subsequent marriage to me and continuous stalking, including back to the Netherlands where I tried to escape him for good, forced me to drop out of my lifelong dream to go to Film School in Los Angeles.
I was also not able to re-enroll in Film School, which I found out the year DOMA was signed into office by Bill Clinton 1996 through an immigration adviser, who conveniently left out any LGBTQ discrimination when discussing my options for staying, which effectively were cut down to nothing by DOMA exactly. The reason I could not re-enroll from within the US was because I had violated the terms of my Student Visa through the marital abuse that was inflicted on me and the advisor did not inform me I could and should self-petition through the Violence Against Women Act of 1994.
I had asked for immigration advice within two years after the divorce, as required, and was legally eligible for US Citizenship. Instead I became Out-Of-Status, or “undocumented,” when my Student Visa expired in 1997, ironically in LGBTQ history on the very same day that Ellen DeGeneres “came out of the closet” on her then TV sitcom. I had already been entered in the database as an international student, so was not “under the radar” from immigration authorities and so very vulnerable to deportation, which my male roommate and assistant manager at the art house movie “The Laemmle Theatres” I worked at took full advantage of.
He became abusive of me, knowing I was openly lesbian since 1994, and I ended up marrying him against my will, made homeless in his family’s hometown of Chula Vista, 7 miles north of the US-Mexico border, in 2007, and racially profiled as bi-racial Dutch-Indonesian, mistaken for Latin, as well as gender/identity profiled by the San Diego Police and Border Patrol. He never sponsored nor divorced me, and we are now married for 10 years, him still living with me and off of me financially, back in Hollywood and in a film production office since 2010, even though I lead my own life in regards my relationships with women.
By the mid-90s the digital age had begun though and then internet came along and I was able to become a filmmaker after all. I had also become a big John Cassavetes fan, which helped out a lot. My husband, broken off from his own abusive family and turned around on LGBTQ rights, is now a co-producer on my LGBTQ exclusion policy documentary detailing my personal journey ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights: From International Film Student to Queer and Undocumented.’
Marriage is the only way to become a US Citizen, if one is not already related to a US parent, sibling or child, which no US Embassy will lead one to believe, promising instead a pathway to Citizenship through hard work somehow.
The original Deferred Action towards US Immigration was designed around John Lennon’s immigration case by his lawyer Leon Wildes, and included his Legal Entry and Extraordinary Ability. The current DACA program scratched both those requirements. The current DACA program also routinely refers to its’ recipients as student, while they did not come enter the US on Student Visas, but illegally instead. Again, these are not racist or elitist notions but simply the facts of US Immigration Policy.
There is a separate Asylum seeking process for people fleeing their countries by necessity, and this is not an easy program to qualify for and rather cruel in its’ design. This undoubtedly has become a motivating factor for people to cross illegally, and I personally wonder if any “Illegal Entries” would have fared better by immigrating to Europe for instance, which has a Merit-Based System as opposed to the US’ Family Law System.
So, there are the “Illegal Entries,” who are solely focused on in the media and by both the former Obama and the current Trump administration, when “pathways to US Citizenships,” or lack thereof, are discussed at all. (The DACA program which got indefinitely stalled was not a pathway to US Citizenship but a temporary relief program, although I find it hard to imagine that one would one not somehow become eligible for citizenship after the program expired. We’ll never know for sure, I guess.)
And there are the “Legal Entries,” those who paid their fees to enter and be here legally and became undocumented after all, since marriage is realistically the only way to stay in legal status, and they have not all married US Citizens for a variety of reasons, (in my case specifically DOMA as an LGBTQ person,) and are completely left hanging by this country, the media and the supposed immigration activists who vowed to fight on all our behalves.
The LGBTQ community amongst the “Legal Entries” in particular, making up a tiny fraction only, has been the only group who has been federally discriminated by the US government in legal immigration through exclusion policies, specifically the Defense Of Marriage Act of 1996, and struck down in 2015.
(The LGBTQ community amongst the “Illegal Entries” do not fall under this group, as their illegal entry prevents them from Adjustment-Of-Status through marriage to a US citizen exactly because of their entering the country illegally, considered a civil infraction and requiring a “Consular Processing” outside of the US.)
Needless to say this stance has not made me exactly popular with the “Illegal Entries,” DACA/DAPA recipients primarily, with mostly but not exclusively Latin backgrounds. But immigration should not be a popularity game and I prefer rationality over popularity in addressing the problems with this current US immigration system. There are irrational appeals to the US public abound in this “immigration debate,” including the notion that these “Illegal Entries” are otherwise law abiding people, and while crossing the border illegally itself is not a crime but a Civil Infraction, they do often violate a number of other laws as well once here, most notably driving with fake or invalid licenses, which makes them somewhat dangerous on the road.
Also, people who have not been assigned a real Social Security number or another temporary Alien Registration Number sometimes make up numbers to pay income taxes when working illegally, since one simply has to pay taxes. If a number is made up and happens to match a real number belonging to a US Citizen, it would be identity theft. So while these are not crimes in the violent sense, they could constitute serious offenses, with serious consequences for others, usually US Citizens.
Lastly, a lot of “Illegal Entries” have US Citizen children, meaning they created families in the US while being here illegally, which is highly irresponsible towards children, and this isn’t ever mentioned by anyone. Just like sending unaccompanied children across the border, in desperate measures, is actually endangering children and highly irresponsible. Because the US Immigration system is a Family Law based system, they indeed create families with the idea of US Citizenship sponsorship through them in mind. The media has referred to this phenomenon with this insulting term “anchor babies,” but this method is not untrue given the current US Immigration system rules.
The “Legal Entries” are often European, Canadian and Australian and therefore dismissed as having white privilege on top, by these very DACA recipients and their activist friends. (A lot of the “Legal Entries” are in fact also Asian.) But white privilege works primarily in one’s favor when it comes down to racial profiling by the US authorities, while walking or driving down the street. It doesn’t do much more for anyone who is actually trying to do something more than just walk down the street, like have a life of some sort and be able to support oneself.
Also, not everyone from “white”/Western countries is actually white. So, white or not, “privilege” is no solution to a fair pathway to legalization. (I am myself not white, or at least only partially white, and mostly mistaken for Latin, especially by the authorities. In the 25 years I’ve been here I have never been recognized for what I actually am, Dutch-Indonesian, as in Dutch-Indonesian on my mother’s side and Dutch on my father’s side. Pre-9/11 I was usually thought of as Italian American and from the East Coast, and Post-9/11 mostly Latin and sometimes Arabic, which should explain something about racial politics in the US.)
It simply comes down to this, the US was founded in principle on the Constitution, (and yes at the expense of Native Americans and Black people,) but it is supposed to follow the US Constitution in all matters pertaining the US, (the right interpretation of the Constitution that is, which excludes the false notion that this country was in any way founded on religion, and Christianity in particular. It was not.)
This country was founded on the notion of Individual Rights, and this extends itself to US immigration, as this is also an American matter, (as is US foreign policy.)
The US and its’ Constitution was never founded on the principles of family, a bloodline-based system that is, and the very system which divided all of European nations historically into nobles and servants, which made royalty out of military dictators and left the rest of the population at their mercy and in their service.
The Constitution is fair in its’ interpretation of what is morally right in establishing the Rights to Life, Liberty, (Private Property of one’s own person, one’s mind and body,) and the Pursuit of Happiness, (something which Europe eventually developed through the Age of Enlightenment, around the 17th century, after centuries of violence and famine on European soil, and which got carried over to the original 13 Colonies of the US when the Founding Fathers come over here to escape the dictatorship England had become.)
The principle of Individual Rights is rooted in the notion of rationality, of reason, the very thing which is supposed to be humanity’s only guidance to existing in an otherwise animalistic world, in which the opposite principle rules, “kill or be killed.” We were not made to kill. We were supposed to evolve using our mental capacity for reasoning, which includes the ability to form moral judgements, have long term memory and develop language and art.
It thus follows that any truly fair and comprehensive immigration reform rests of the Principle of Individual Rights, a fair merit-based system, (one which relies on emotional and intellectual intelligence,) and not marriage and bloodline, (US Citizenship sponsorship through spouses, parents, children, siblings,) as it currently works.
None of the existing Visas, other than those based on “exceptional ability,” or lots of money, like the “Artist” Visa and the “Investors” Visa respectively, requiring fame in one’s own country or about half a million in US investments, lead to US Citizenship, so not the non-immigrant Tourist- and Student Visas, nor the low-skilled and high-skilled Immigrant Work Visas.
The US Embassies abroad will not explain this to anyone applying and in fact mislead them into thinking a pathway to Permanent Residence or US Citizenship is available over time, leaving marriage to a US Citizen as the only option realistically available, and which obviously has to be real, but is in turn scrutinized through the Immigration Marriage Fraud Act of 1986.
The US will also not inform you of any options available in the unfortunate circumstance a foreigner falls prey to abuse from US Citizens, whether random individuals, employers or spouses. Spousal abuse falls under the Violence Against Women Act and all other abuse under the U-Visa.
The current Trump administration is in fact so against foreigners having any rights at all it came up with a counter-program accusing foreigners of US Citizen’s abuse instead.
And long before the Trump administration the US itself has given the false idea that Work Visas, which are either low-skilled or high-skilled temporary Visas, could lead to permanent immigration, and this is absolutely not true, which is the primary reason a lot of the “Legal Entries” have overstayed, not because they simply had a Tourist Visa and decided they did not want to go home after all, although there are those people amongst the “Legal Entries” as well.
Others have actually invested years of their time and tons of money in extending their Work Visas in the hopes something would lead to permanence in the US, to only be duped by the US Government instead.
It is completely common to hear the term immigration thrown around and actually talk about temporary guest worker programs only, and no one will spell out that these work programs do not ever lead to US Citizenship. The US Embassy abroad plays into this exact same lie, and so the common loophole known amongst US Citizens and foreigners alike is marriage between the two as the only way to stay. US Citizens have taken enormous advantage of this system and there is even a business built around this form of human trafficking, often for sex purposes since it revolves around marriage, called the “mail order bride business.”
Obviously mostly foreign women fall victim to this scam, but it can also happen to men. It is in fact so common that in 1994 Joe Biden signed a piece of legislation into office to combat this cruel practice, called the Violence Against Women Act, (VAWA,) and any foreigner who feels they have been coerced into marriage and suffered abuse should seek to apply under it.
As someone who fell victim to forced opposite-sex marital abuse at the hands of a US husband myself, while very confident in my lesbian identity and my purpose for being here as a film student, I highly recommend any foreigner, especially female to seriously look into all their legal options with an immigration lawyer before considering moving to the US. This is truly a warning of sorts because your life as a foreigner will be ruined entirely. Do not think you don’t need to know your legal options well in advance and think instead you will figure it out once here, for you might very well get stuck in a situation that will become your worst nightmare.
The US Immigration system is extremely cruel and archaic, and you would do well to consider other countries instead, who have a Merit-Based Point System, (professional qualifications,) instead of a Family Law Based System, (marriage and bloodline,) like all countries in the European Union for instance. And always discuss your options with a specialized lawyer either way and do not take chances when it comes to immigration abroad, for you will be easily taken advantage of and your legal rights are limited as a foreigner.
I have seen foreigners begging on the streets in Los Angeles, foreign women sold into prostitution in Hollywood. I have been homeless myself and lived in dubious buildings in order to save on rent money and I have heard arguments through the walls in foreign accents, screams and cries, and have seen fear in people’s eyes. There are many people preying on young women, and foreigners are particularly vulnerable. I have seen pretty young women get ravaged by drugs and lose their minds, so this stands as a warning to any idealistic person with an “American Dream.”
An Individual Rights Merit-Based Point System done right is the only fair and true solution to the US’ immigration problem, and certainly not the building of a wall, drone surveillance and more for-profit detention centers.
Those people who left their home countries out of a sense of lack of safety should be considered refugees, by the U.N.’s definition of what constitutes a refugee, and not be confused with immigrants.
And while the “Illegal Entries” do not agree with me morally, I do not wish for their deportation and would want an “amnesty” program in place for all of those amongst the 11 million who have been here for lengthy periods of time, do not pose national security threats and have contributed to US society, in response to a currently “broken” or rather corrupt immigration system, which since long has allowed for and actually feeds on the exploitation of foreigners for cheap labor.
If the US truly wanted to stop or slow down illegal immigration it could simply start giving out fewer low-skilled Visas, instead of allowing guest workers to come in on temporary Visas and as a result crate an opportunity for them overstay those. US Foreign Policy has a lot to do with reasons for migrating to the US from the South, which is another complex issue that needs consideration but even before the unfair NAFTA treaty of 1994 in Mexico illegal immigration already existed. There are currently many US Citizens unjustly incarcerated, who should be released and at least be eligible for some of those jobs, as well as there are people who are unfairly taking advantage of US benefits, who could work low-skilled jobs instead.
The true solution is however a merit-based system over a family-based system, according to US Constitutional principles.
Again, I am merely stating researched facts in my own long and difficult and dangerous journey towards attempting legalization after 25 years in the US, and am drawing the appropriate conclusions, based on the US Constitution and its’ principles of Individual Rights.
I am not creating the existing division between the 11 million undocumented immigrants, the immigration activists who designed DACA are responsible for that, leaving out some 6 million people who entered to US legally and who are now more vulnerable to deportation due to the US government, media and the US public’s attention they have brought to this issue.
I will however continue to highlight these issues and fight for the people within this group who entered legally, and more specifically for the LGBTQ people amongst those, who were truly the only ones excluded from legalization by DOMA. I actually propose a blanket legislation for these individuals only, which I refer to as “The DOMA Victims Act for Legal Entries.”
Any of the current 11 million undocumented people who were not specifically federally discriminated against should want and aim for some sort of “amnesty,” even if the term is less than ideal, particularly insulting towards the “Legal Entries,” who often spent thousands to come and be here legally. Maybe those amongst the “Legal Entries” who are not LGBTQ can come up with a better term, since they were often misled to believe they could work their way towards Permanent Residence in the US.
The “Legal Entries” who are part of the LGBTQ community and were specifically excluded from legal immigration through the Defense Of Marriage Act are in fact Victims of Federal discrimination, and I refer to us as “DOMA Victims,” for whom special legislation should indeed be provided, as we did absolutely nothing wrong, except protest LGBTQ discrimination by overstaying exactly, oftentimes engaged to, in domestic partnerships with, or even married according to whichever US State allowed us. I think “The DOMA Victims Act for Legal Entries” sums it up. We were here before, during and after DOMA shut our legal chances down and should be compensated accordingly, not told to go back of the very line we already stood in entering the country legally.
LGBTQ Americans should have full equality under US law, and by extension those of us who are foreigners and followed the rules should also enjoy full equality in our pursuit to become Legal Permanent Residents or US Citizens, when in marital relationships to US Citizens, as has been custom for heterosexuals for decades.
As long as LGBTQ US Citizens, and Legal Foreigners on temporary Work Visas, still can get fired in the majority of US States, we cannot get married to each other and be guaranteed a pathway to citizenship and no separation from each other, even now that DOMA is down. Our same-sex marriages and eligibility is still at risk under the Immigration Marriage Fraud Law of 1986.
As I mentioned previously, in light of the still current LGBTQ inequality under US law, it is particularly ridiculous that some US Citizens, primarily Liberals, have favored DACA recipients themselves in this ongoing immigration debate. These well-meaning but ill-informed Democrats are being played on their emotions at the cost of their rational thinking abilities by all the overwhelmingly sad stories they hear from undocumented people and immigration activists.
They very often often resort to the argument so familiar to the LGBTQ community, namely that children have more rights than LGBTQ people. This has in fact been the age old argument used against us by the Right-Wing agenda so intent on denying us our full equality, and now it is the Left-Wing who is actually falling for it. Foreigner children brought here illegally simply do not have more rights to legalization than LGBTQ people who have been excluded under Family Law Immigration Policy.
The fact that some of them have been here most of their lives has nothing to do with this, and it is simply a fact that many LGBTQ people themselves have been here for most of their lives, myself included. The responsibility to ensure the rights and safety for children lies in the hands of their own parents and should not be used against a real discriminated against minority group like the LGBTQ community.
Lastly, our LGBTQ rights should also never have been a voting matter under the guise of democracy, as one group of people should not have the right to vote on the basic, human rights of another group of people. As heterosexual people are still known to be the overall majority, they should not have the “democratic” right to vote a minority group into extinction. Just like white people should not have the right to decide the fate of People of Color, or men just vote on women’s rights. The US Constitution was designed on the principle of the Rights of the Individual, no matter how much of a minority or unpopular that person is, that is what equality under the law means. (The Equal Rights Amendment should ideally also not include the word “women” in the phrase “all men are created equal,” and it should simply state “all people are created equal,” meaning all human being of whatever gender and whatever race.)
Any human right should be appealed to on the notion of everyone’s individual rights to freedom, not on the mere notion of equality, according to the notion that one person’s right end where another person’s right begins.
On a final note, a Merit-Based Point System towards immigration should be based on fair testing of emotional and intellectual IQ for sufficient integration into US society, and not necessarily or exclusively based on college degrees and professional accomplishments.
(And if the US government wanted no immigration to the US at all, it should simply close its’ border altogether, and conversely also withdraw all of its’ Foreign Policy and internal business.)
(NOTE: This Article has been Republished in 3 Parts. Click Here for Part 1. Click Here for Part 2. And Click Here for Part 3.)
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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)
