U.S. Opens Path to Asylum for Victims of Sexual Abuse

[steven johnson]

Source: NY Times

By JULIA PRESTON
Published: July 16, 2009
The Obama administration has opened the way for foreign women who are victims of severe domestic beatings and sexual abuse to receive asylum in the United States. The action reverses a Bush administration stance on an issue at the center of a protracted and passionate legal battle over the possibilities for battered women to become refugees.
In addition to meeting the existing strict conditions for being granted asylum, abused women need to show a judge that women are viewed as subordinate by their abuser, according to a court filing by the administration, and must also show that domestic abuse is widely tolerated in their country.
The administration laid out its position in an immigration appeals court filing in the case of a woman from Mexico who requested asylum, saying she feared she would be murdered by a common law husband there. According to court documents filed in San Francisco, the man repeatedly raped her at gunpoint, held her captive, stole from her and at one point attempted to burn her alive when he learned she was pregnant.
The Obama administration's position caps a legal odyssey for foreign women seeking protection in the United States from domestic abuse that began in 1996 when a Guatemalan woman named Rody Alvarado was granted asylum by an immigration court, based on her account of serial beatings by her husband, a Guatemalan soldier. Three years later, an immigration appeals court overturned Ms. Alvarado's asylum, saying she was not part of any persecuted group under American law.



Read more: http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=402952&single=1&f=21

[Hell Hath No Fury]

1. Fantastic!

Something like this is long overdue.

[Seedersandleechers]

2. Now that is compassionate!

I am so happy the administration set this precedence.

[msanthrope]

3. This is why I voted for him. n/t

[provis99]

4. so what do we do when these women use their status to bring over their husbands?

you know its gonna happen.

[primavera]

6. Not if their husbands were the abusers, it won't

If a person who sought asylum based upon a claim that she was beaten by her spouse and then tried to bring him over at a later time, it would undermine the credibility of her asylum claim, so she would most likely lose her status. In any family based petition, the first thing the immigration service will look at is how the petitioner gained qualifying status herself; there's no way they would fail to notice that she gained status as an asylee seeking to escape her husband, and that would be the end of her petition and, most likely, her own status as well.

[ohio2007]

11. They are more concerned with getting thier children over the border. Hubby will have to enter the US

in the usual way.

[Xenotime]

5. That's wonderful that they can then come here and get free healthcare.

[primavera]

7. With so many Americans going to Costa Rica, Vietnam, Cuba, Canada...

... and so on to receive free health care, it would be poetic justice if they could. But since most immigrants are ineligible to receive publicly funded health care, it's not likely to happen.

[IDFbunny]

9. Are you sure it's free?

Otherwise I was a fool for paying for my dental work in Costa Rica.

[Control-Z]

8. I hope many women will be able to take advantage

of the help. I'm afraid, though, that it will be dangerous for women just to seek and apply for it. I hope safeguards are put in place to protect them every step of the way.

I would also like to see more programs and protections for American women.

[Odin2005]

10. WOOT!