Suchergebnisse

On 3 June 1977, the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) denied an immigrant visa to a Filipino woman, Zenaida Porte Rebultan, when she acknowledged that she was a lesbian. Rebultan qualified as a second-preference alien for purposes of immigration because every other member of her immediate family had already moved permanently to the United States. The INS declared her excludable, however, under section 212(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, according to which "aliens afflicted with psychopathic personality, or sexual deviation, or a mental defect" were "ineligible to receive visas and shall be excluded from admission into the United States."

In 1917, the US Congress enacted legislation that authorized the US Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) to refuse immigrant visas for a variety of medical conditions, of which homosexuality was named as one. At that time, the American Psychiatric Assoc (APA) defined homosexuality as a "constitutional psychopathic inferiority." While the wording was revised in 1952 & 1965, the definition remained strong enough to justify INS exclusion of homosexual immigrants. Even though the APA removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973, considerable ambiguity remained regarding the INS practice until the passage of the 1990 Immigration Act. Surprisingly, repeal of the ban on gay & lesbian aliens was simply part of a broad reform of immigration laws; there was little input from the lesbian/gay movement. The seventeen-year lag between the 1973 APA decision & the 1990 reform demonstrates the limitations for effecting change in federal policy of a social movement that must rely more on logic & moral rationality than political empowerment. J. W. Stanton