(Reprinted without permission from Dec 17, 1993 Capital XTRA!)

                       Hit-and-miss immigration

               Cross-border couples face game of chance

                       Story by Phillip Hannan

If  you're  looking  to  sponsor your same-sex partner to immigrate to
Canada,  it  may  be  a  little  easier  now  -- unless you run into a
homophobic immigration officer, that is.
    Under  amendments passed by Parliament to the Immigration Act last
February,  the  rules allowing sponsorship don't change -- you have to
be in a legal heterosexual marriage to sponsor your parnter.
    What  has changed is that people are being exempted from the rules
under  humanitarian  and compassionate grounds.  Under the old system,
only  Ottawa could grant humanitarian and compassionate immigration --
now  that  decision  can  be  made by individual consulate and embassy
officials.
    "On the surface it appeared to be zero for us," says Doug Sanders,
whose   relationship  with  his  Thai  lover  ended  when  immigration
officials refused further visa extensions.
    "But  there  was  a  decision  to  decentralize decision-making on
compassionate  and humanitarian grounds to the program officers in the
particular embassies and consulates," he says.
    "What  we  have  discovered  is that people are now getting landed
under compassionate and humanitarian (grounds).  It's a real flip."
    Sanders,  a professor of law at the University of British Columbia
has  organized  other lesbian and gay couples seeking to live together
in Canada.  The Lesbian and Gay Immigration Task Force (LEGIT) lobbied
the  Tory government when it was in power to change the act to include
same-sex  couples.   Sanders  is  planning  to present the new Liberal
immigration minister with a brief laying out the situation.
    But while selected people are getting into the country as a result
of decisions by some immigration officers, there are no guarantees.
    "It's completely discretionary in the local office," says Sanders.
"If you run into a homophobe in the consulate in Atlanta -- game over.
If  you go to an office where they haven't figured out what the change
means in terms of same-sex couples -- you're dead."
    The problem, says Sanders, is that while the Tories did reform the
legislation,  it  was a closet reform:  it doesn't spell out that gays
and lesbians are allowed to sponsor their partners.
    "While  it's  fabulous  to  have the reform, we now have the worst
possible  legal  regime in terms of allowing sponsorship because there
are no rules, there is no information."
    "It's  opened  up,  but  it's  opened  up  without  rules, without
appeals, without any clues."
    Sanders  is  hoping the election of a Liberal government will mean
the  immigration  department  will  amend  the  regulations to include
same-sex couples.
    One  immigration  lawyer  says some immigration officials are very
supportive of the changes.
    "I  know  that  the  proposal  has been prepared by bureaucrats in
Ottawa,"  says  Mary  Joseph,  an immigration lawyer based in Toronto.
"It's all there ready to go and has been for an awfully long time."
    Joseph  says  the  sponsorship  process now is very discretionary.
She  wants  to  see  amendments  that spell out the rights of same-sex
couples.
    "If  we  can  get  it  into the legislation, then there are appeal
rights  and  certain  standards  that  all these offices would have to
meet."
    With  the closet opening of the immigration door, she says only 20
percent  of  cases  involving  a  Canadian  seeking  to  sponsor their
same-sex  partner  now  need  an  immigration lawyer.  The process has
opened  up  to the point where 80 percent of these couples can resolve
their own cases, she says.
    Joseph, who advertises her services to the Toronto lesbian and gay
community,  is  also  asking the immigration department to reverse its
ruling barring an Argentine gay man from immigrating to Canada -- even
though he may face persecution if he returns to Argentina.
    Joseph refers to her client as Ed and says he should be allowed to
immigrate  under  Canadian  regulations  where  an immigrant "would be
subjected to an objectively identifiable risk."
    "Ed  is  living  in  a  committed, long-term relationship with his
Canadian  sponsor,"  says  Joseph.   "And (he) is about to be deported
back  to Argentina where, more likely than not, he will suffer serious
bodily harm for being a homosexual."
    In   recent   years,   Argentine   gays   have  faced  harassment,
intimidation,  and  arrest.   Although  homosexuality  is not illegal,
police  bend  various  loitering or prostitution laws to persecute gay
men.   Closeted  men are threatened with exposure at work and at home,
while brutality in police jails is commonplace.

[picture  of  Sergio  Marchi:   A  NEW  LIBERAL  POLICY?   LEGIT hopes
Immigration  Minister  Sergio  Marchi  will push cabinet colleagues to
support progressive policy changes.]