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The connection between hardships facing queer individuals and current immigration policies in the United States remains largely unexplored. While many other countries, especially Western democracies, allow bi-national same-sex couples to gain immigration benefits, the United States restricts benefits of sponsorship to heterosexual marriages. This paper attempts to understand why the United States continues to deny spouse sponsorship benefits for bi-national same-sex couples by comparing case studies of Australia and Canada in historical perspective with the United States. Three factors were discovered to uniquely face the United States: the unparalleled securitization of homosexuality, a strategy of non-confrontational assimilation by contemporary LGBT groups, and the establishment of a distinct legal identity for queer immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]