Legal immigrants can now change the sex on their official U.S. documents by showing statements from foreign doctors, says a last-minute transgender memo issued on President Barack Obama’s last full day in office.
“Individuals may request a change in the gender reflected on a USCIS-issued document … [and] USCIS will issue an initial or amended document reflecting the changed gender designation,” said the Jan. 19 transgender-related document for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services unit in the Department of Homeland Security.
The memo reinforces the claim by progressives that every person should be allowed to easily change their legal sex even without changing their biology or appearance.
If established nationwide, the “gender fluid” transgender policy would effectively eliminate the ability of American men and women to preserve single-sex institutions, such as single-sex sports leagues, scholarships, locker rooms and shelters.
It would also bar government-funded schools from recognizing the different development needs of teenage boys and girls, because youths who claim they want to live as members of the other sex could claim discrimination whenever they are assigned to a single-sex group matching their biological and genetic sex.
Already, speech rules issued by the Obama administration ordered that youths in K-12 schools must use the “his” and her” pronouns demanded in the classroom by any gender-switching youths, even if they are conversing in a biology classrooms.
Polls show the former administration’s hostility to sexual distinctions is deeply unpopular. Less than one-quarter of Americans believe that people should be allowed to change their legal sex without first showing strong evidence that they wish to change their appearance, behavior and even their physical biology.
Only about 1-in-2,400 American adults have changed their name from one sex to the other, according to a study of the 2010 census.
Under the administration’s last-minute rule, immigrants can flip their legal sex on their documents merely by providing a letter from a foreign medical professional who says the migrant feels like — or has a “gender identity” of — a person of the other sex.
That’s a very low bar, especially because there’s an international industry that provides fake document to legal and illegal immigrants.
“The USCIS policy memorandum has far-reaching implications that don’t appear to have been well thought through,” wrote immigration expert Dan Cadman, at the Center for Immigration Studies.
“Immigration documents are used for a wide variety of reasons, including international travel. As anyone who has ever crossed an international border knows, significant problems can arise from providing individuals with documents whose gender markers don’t accord with their physical attributes … This would leave the person in the position of having a passport reflecting one gender, and U.S. alien registration documents in another,” he wrote.
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