The Post has a front-page story on the push for spousal immigration rights for homosexual couples. (Foreign spouses are admitted without numerical limitation; last year, they represented 28 percent of the 1.1 million people who received green cards.) What was interesting was that the gay-rights groups are apparently willing to torpedo an amnesty bill by insisting on their issue. The immigration guy for the Roman bishops described the situation accurately:
“It introduces a new controversial element to the issue which will divide the faith community and further jeopardize chances for a fair and bipartisan compromise,” said Kevin Appleby of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which last year said the inclusion of gay couples in a House bill aimed at reuniting families made it “impossible” for the group to support the measure. “Immigration is hard enough without adding same-sex marriage to the mix.”
But the position of the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, the Hispanic evangelical macher, was more ambiguous:
The key constituency to changes getting passed are white evangelicals, he added. After years of outreach, Latino evangelicals have formed alliances with white evangelical groups — and those evangelicals are key to getting Republican votes in the House. Including provisions related to gay marriage, Rodriguez said, would prompt white evangelicals to desert the coalition.
“It is not a matter of being anti-anything but being pro-immigration reform,” he said. “It is not fair to morph the immigration agenda with the same-sex agenda.”
Maybe I’m misreading this, but it sure sounds to me like what he’s saying is that Hispanic evangelical groups are not the problem — they’d go along with gay “marriage” rights in immigration if they got amnesty in return. But it’s those darn white evangelical knuckle-draggers that have to be catered to.