Immigration Law Trends — Asylum For Gay Persons 2
When the United States of America came into being with the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, there were no immigration laws. There were no such laws for almost 100 years. In 1875 the first immigration law was passed by Congress and Americans have been debating who should be allowed to legally immigrate to the United States and who should be excluded.
The Immigration Act of 1917 was the first U.S. law to exclude lesbian and gay aliens from entry into the United States. Congress excluded lesbians and gay men because of the medical and psychiatric communities’ belief that homosexuality was a disease. Congress ended the general exclusion of lesbian and gay aliens in 1990, which has allowed refugees to escape sexual orientation based persecution in their home countries. Also in 1990, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed an immigration judge’s (IJ’s) decision to withhold deportation of a gay Cuban marielito in the case of In re Toboso-Alfonso. This was the first known instance in U.S. immigration law where a homosexual was cast as a member of a particular social group,
