One day before President Donald Trump took the oath of office (when exactly no one was paying attention), then-President Barack Obama’s administration quietly finalized a new memorandum allowing immigrants to receive documentation based on their preferred “gender identity.”
According to the policy, enacted on Jan. 19, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will now provide work permits, travel documents, permanent residency cards, refugee documents and Certificates of Naturalization or Citizenship to immigrants based on their gender identity, rather than their biological sex.Immigrants who already have these documents can petition the government for new ones that reflect their preferred gender. To get a new, updated document, an immigrant must provide a court order or another government-issued I.D. document that reflects their preferred gender (such as a driver’s license, birth certificate or passport). If the immigrant doesn’t have any of these things, the new policy states they can simply bring in a note from their doctor, social worker or counselor verifying their new gender identity.
USCIS almost apologetically adds that official government documents are limited to “male” and “female” genders, meaning immigrants who identify with one of the myriad “non-binary” gender affiliations are straight up out of luck.