The Obama administration has been pushing the envelope recently in the culture wars. And this is bleeding over into immigration.
Now, the administration will grant the "same-sex domestic partner" of a foreign diplomat a nonimmigrant visa as an accompanying "immediate family member." Not only may the unmarried "domestic partner" of certain straight and gay aliens get a visa, but so may relatives of the domestic partner. My colleague David North has written on this shift in some detail.
This is a sly move. For, surely, we don't expect diplomats, officially representing their nations, to defraud the United States with regard to visa applications. What better class of aliens to start with to normalize visas going to non-relatives under the guise of relatives?
Further, the administration's breathtaking recent decision to stop defending a long-standing law, the Defense of Marriage Act, factors into the mix. Upon the Obama administration's refusal to defend this law, gay immigrants began to agitate for spousal visas. A Filipino student visa holder, for example, has threatened to sue for his gay "husband" to get such a visa.
For those concerned about the adverse effects of chain migration, opening up visas intended for spouses in the conventional definition of the term dramatically expands the number of immigrants – without any change in the statutory legal immigration caps. One estimate, cited in the above story on the litigious Filipino, says "there are 36,000 binational same-sex couples – where one person is a [sic] immigrant and the other a U.S. citizen – in the country."
The shift is taking hold on a range of fronts. The same story reports that a homosexual pressure group is pushing "the Department of Homeland Security to stay deportations in cases where a person was denied residency because the federal government wouldn't recognize his or her same-sex marriage." The administration stands on very thin ice to take such actions on any of these fronts because Congress alone has plenary power to set immigration policy. But agitators don't typically respect the rule of law, the Constitution, or the legislative process. They prefer to make an end-run around legitimate democratic procedures.
One group aiding and abetting this immigration policy of "slouching toward Gomorrah" might come as a shock: evangelical elites. Of course, the Galen Careys, Richard Lands, and Mat Stavers would deny that they're helping to advance the homosexual lobby's agenda. But by constantly advocating "comprehensive immigration reform" (amnesty, in plainspeak), sidling up to the religious Left on immigration issues, and brow-beating rank-and-file Christians who oppose both legalization schemes and the gay rights agenda on religious principle, these supposed "leaders" empower special interests that don't split moral hairs or see things along the same lines as do Bible-believing Christians on major issues such as the sanctity of marriage and natural law.
The Obama administration may well include new gay immigration rights as part of a "comprehensive immigration reform" package because homosexuals are generally considered more of a constituency of the Democrats, along with labor unions, pro-choice lobbies, and environmentalists.