Customer Reviews

Stories of Gay and Lesbian Immigration: Together Forever? (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies)

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With sensitivity for the individual human dramas involved, London-born University of Sydney sociologist Dr. John Harte has penned a movingly personal and often wry look at Australia's extraordinarily bold gay immigration policy. Since the mid-1980s, gay and lesbian Aussies have had their government's blessings to sponsor their overseas lovers as immigrants to Australia. They have come in droves: From Europe, from the Americas, from Africa and from Asia. Their stories, based on interviews during more than 15 years of research, form the basis of this candid book. Some relationships broke up before the ink was dry on the immigration forms. Others ended in tragedy due to the scourge of AIDS. Oftentimes the expectations were naive. Very often, male ego-oriented career expectations proved the downfall of male-male relationships. Many failed over the longterm, prompting the author to reflect on the issue of gay monogamy. Hence, his subtitle: "Together Forever?" Yet there are success stories, including the touching tale of two elderly men now able to spend their remaining years together thanks to Australia's pioneering immigration policy. Academics expecting a dense, scholarly tome will no doubt look down their noses scoffingly at Harte's book, dismissing it as being too personal. But the author warns on the first page of the introduction that he has written a highly subjective book aimed at outlining Australia's gay immigration policy as he saw it come into being first-hand during the 1980s and '90s. There are some startling revelations, such as the fact that a top government official in the early days of the program blatantly encouraged gays and lesbians to bring their foreign lovers into the country on tourist visas in order to present immigration officials in his own department with a fait accompli - in effect circumventing immigration regulations so that the fledgling gay immigration program might succeed. Through it all, and with amazing candor, Harte interweaves the story of his own 30-year primary gay relationship with a now-naturalized Aussie. That makes this book a labor of love - in the truest sense of the word.

A British-born Australian immigrant publishes his results about gay immigration to Australia. Gay immigration is a very urgent issue and I'm glad the matter is being documented. But this book left me so sad and dissatisfied. On the one hand, activists globally can learn from Austalia's example. This book starts with a decent chapter on the history of gay Australian immigration. This was also a longitudinal study: something you rarely find in sexual orientation-related research. However, the book is very sloppily-written. It reads like a scrapbook or diary. So many of his discussions are internal and unimportant. There's no way an American scholar could get tenure with a book like this. Usually, I praise gay male authors that remember to include lesbians in their research. But the lesbians involved in the study get scant mention and thus become negligible. Like studies of gay Asians in white-dominated countries throughout the world, this text is filled with cute, young Asian guys having no choice but to partner with size-, age-, and looks-challenged white mates. This book will kinda rub the younger non-Eurocentric gay men of color the wrong way. You would think that binational gay couples have risked thick and thin to be together. In this book, the Australian officials encourage gay couples to cheat on their applications and all kinds of pairs that have no intention of staying together apply for couple status. Most every respondent said the immigration controversy is affecting their health negatively. Further, the author says things about his long-term partner that no spouse should say about another in print. There's no bigamy allowed in Australia for straight citizens, yet the author is not fazed in the least to apply for immigration status for his Thai extra lover. Worse, he gets mad when he finds that his Thai lover is cheating but never criticizes himself for cheating on his first lover with the Thai national. Bottom line: America is so far away from enacting gay immigration (which is a shame) and this book will do NOTHING to help that goal happen, as poor and tragic as this work is.