Immigrants may be denied entry to U.S. based on their sexuality, new Eithne Luibhéid book shows

Some controversial issues concerning U.S. immigration policy have been in the news recently, such as Cuban refugees being automatically admitted while Haitians are sent back.

But Americans are perhaps less familiar with those policies as they pertain to sexuality, such as the fact that, as late as 1990, gay men and lesbians were barred from entering the country as immigrants.

Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border, a new book by Eithne Luibhéid, ethnic studies, examines 150 years of sexuality-based immigration policy as it has been applied to women. Published in November by the University of Minnesota Press, this innovative book breaks new scholarly ground in demonstrating a consistent pattern of discrimination tightly woven from threads of sexuality, morality, class, race and gender.

Beginning with restrictions on Chinese women coming to the United States in the 1850s and continuing through recent movements in California to prevent Latina women of childbearing age from becoming citizens, the author shows how this pattern reveals an ingrained belief system that perpetuates the dominant, white, heterosexual, patriarchal foundation of American society.

Luibhéid’s study draws on Congressional hearings, Immigration Service manuals, court records and the National Archives. The documents reveal in startlingly frank ways such information as policy makers’ efforts to reduce the Japanese-American birth rate in order to preserve the dominance of the white population.

The author also interviewed people who had firsthand involvement in cases dealing with immigration and sexuality. These include individuals involved in the 1961 case of a Mexican woman deported on charges of lesbianism and the case of another Mexican woman who, raped by a U.S. Border Patrol agent, took the unusual step of pursuing justice through the Mexican Consulate and the U.S. courts.

Luibhéid’s work reflects new directions in ethnic studies scholarship which link sexuality to the study of race, globalization and immigration.
Last year she organized a national conference at BGSU titled “Sexuality, Migration and the Contested Borders of U.S. Citizenship,” which has resulted in an edited collection of essays currently under review at a prestigious university press.

Her most recent project, in conjunction with the Program in Ethnic and Racial Studies at Trinity College, Dublin, is co-organizing a national conference in Ireland called “Women’s Movement: Migrant Women Transforming Ireland.” To be held in March 2003, the conference will examine the relatively new phenomenon of asylum seekers and program refugees coming to a country historically associated with emigration of its own citizens, which is forcing Ireland to rethink its beliefs about national identity in the current global context.

In addition, Luibhéid has received a grant from the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, in New York City, to assist with her research into African asylum-seekers and childbearing in Ireland.

Later this year she will concentrate on this research and work on a book-length study titled “Babies of Convenience? African Asylum Seekers and Childbearing in Ireland,” as a fellow at Bowling Green’s Institute for the Study of Culture and Society.