| HN Mirror

In the long-run, they never do when (1) those equal treatment mandates are firmly enshrined in law, and (2) there is an effective judicial remedy for violations of that law. Cases where they do it in an ongoing manner are cases where either (1) or (2) are missing.

In the case of immigration/visas, a big problem is that (in many legal systems) most immigration/visa decisions are not judicially reviewable. (There are often exceptions for certain areas of immigration law, such as refugee status determinations and deportation proceedings, but if you are refused a visa from outside the country you usually have no legal recourse.) This means that, even if you believe you have been discriminated against on a legally prohibited ground, no court will even hear your claim.

I think that's wrong, and that should be changed. And it impacts all kinds of people; I'm sure some people get discriminated against on the basis of their sexuality when seeking visas and have no legal recourse, but plenty of people get discriminated against on other grounds – or even just get visas denied for completely inscrutable reasons (e.g. Daniel Stenberg's continual denial of a US visa) – and have no recourse either. But this is a problem which could be fixed with sufficient political will; the law could be amended to grant rights of judicial review in all visa/immigration matters.

Another point: you can say "even if the law says that married and unmarried couples should be treated equally, immigration officials will ignore/violate that law", but you can equally say "even if the law says that same-sex and opposite-sex married couples should be treated equally, immigration officials will ignore/violate that law". I don't understand how, the risk that some immigration official might discriminate against a same-sex couple is a good argument for retaining the legal recognition of marriage, since immigration officials can discriminate against same-sex couples whether marriage is a legally recognised institution or not.