Severe Spousal Abuse now qualifies for asylym.

[SirNitram]

Link

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 in a protracted and passionate legal battle over the possibilities for battered women to become refugees.

In addition to meeting other strict conditions for asylum, abused women will need to show that they are treated by their abuser as subordinates and little better than property, according to an immigration court filing by the administration, and that domestic abuse is widely tolerated in their country. They must show that they could not find protection from institutions at home or by moving to another place within their own 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 her 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 tried to burn her alive when he learned she was pregnant.

The government submitted its legal brief in April, but the woman only recently gave her consent for the confidential case documents to be disclosed to The New York Times. The government has marked a clear, although narrow, pathway for battered women seeking asylum, lawyers said, after 13 years of tangled court arguments, including resistance from the Bush administration to recognize any of those claims.

Moving cautiously, the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately recommend asylum for the Mexican woman, who is identified in the court papers only by her initials as L.R. But the department, in the unusual submission written by senior government lawyers, concluded in plain terms that “it is possible” that the Mexican woman “and other applicants who have experienced domestic violence could qualify for asylum.”

As recently as last year, Bush administration lawyers had argued in the same case that in spite of her husband’s brutality, L.R. and other battered women could not meet the standards of American asylum law.

“This really opens the door to the protection of women who have suffered these kinds of violations,” said Karen Musalo, a professor who is director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Professor Musalo has represented other abused women seeking asylum and recently took up the case of L.R.

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 repeated beatings by her husband. Three years later, an immigration appeals court overturned Ms. Alvarado’s asylum, saying she was not part of any persecuted group under American law.

Since then Ms. Alvarado’s case has stalled as successive administrations debated the issue, with immigration officials reluctant to open a floodgate of asylum petitions from battered women across the globe. During the Clinton administration, Attorney General Janet Reno proposed regulations to clarify the matter, but they have never gone into effect. In a briefing paper in 2004, lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security raised the possibility of asylum for victims of domestic violence, but the Bush administration never put that into practice in immigration court, Professor Musalo said.

Now Homeland Security officials say they are returning to views the department put forward in 2004, refining them to draw conditions sufficiently narrow that battered women would prevail in only a limited number cases.

“Although each case is highly fact-dependent and requires scrutiny of the specific threat an applicant faces,” said Matt Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, “the department continues to view domestic violence as a possible basis for asylum in the United States.” He said officials hoped to complete regulations governing the complex cases.

The new policy does not involve women fleeing genital mutilation.

Any applicant for asylum or refugee status in the United States must demonstrate a “well-founded fear of persecution” because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or “membership in a particular social group.” The extended legal argument has been whether abused women could be part of any social group that would be eligible under those terms. Last year, 22,930 people won asylum in this country fleeing all types of persecution; the number has been decreasing in recent years.

Because asylum cases are confidential, there is no way of knowing how many applications by battered women have been denied or held up over the last decade. The issue is further complicated by the peculiarities of the United States immigration system, in which asylum cases are heard in courts that are not part of the federal judiciary, but are run by an agency of the Justice Department, with Homeland Security officials representing the government.

The government has not disputed the painful history that L.R., now 42, recounts in a court declaration. The man who became her tormentor first assaulted her when she was a teenager and he was a physical education coach, 14 years her senior, at a high school in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. He and his family were regarded as wealthy and influential because they owned a restaurant in town, L.R. said.

Over the years, he made her live with him, and forced her to have sex with him by putting a gun or a machete to her head, by breaking her nose and by threatening to kill the small children of her sister. Once when she became pregnant, she said, she barely escaped alive after he had poured kerosene on the bed where she was sleeping and ignited it. He stole the salary she earned as a teacher and later sold her teacher’s license.

Local police dismissed her reports of violence as “a private matter,” the court documents said, and a judge she turned to for help tried to seduce her.

“In Mexico, men believe they have a right to abuse their women because they are like a possession,” she said. With three children born from her involuntary sex with the man, who never married her, she fled to California in 2004.

An immigration judge denied her asylum claim in 2006. In its new filing, the government urged that L.R.’s case be sent back to the immigration court for further review, suggesting she might still succeed. But the government also injected a caveat, insisting that “this does not mean that every victim of domestic violence would be eligible for asylum.”

Better than it was, by a long shot.

[Julhelm]

The new policy does not involve women fleeing genital mutilation.

Why not?

[Coyote]

The new policy does not involve women fleeing genital mutilation.

Why not?

It opens up cans of worms about 'culture' and 'tradition'.

[Siege]

It opens up cans of worms about 'culture' and 'tradition'.

Why does genital mutilation open this can of worms whilst 'treating your wife like a punching bag' apparently does not?

[ArmorPierce]

It was reasoned that burning women at the stake upon the death of her husband was cultural and traditional too.

[fgalkin]

Will this apply to sex slaves brought into the US?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Pick]

A move in the right direction, certainly.

[Flameblade]

It opens up cans of worms about 'culture' and 'tradition'.

Why does genital mutilation open this can of worms whilst 'treating your wife like a punching bag' apparently does not?

Mainly because the US practices genital mutilation on an epic scale. Only over here it isn't on women, it's on men.

On the main topic, it's a move in the right direction, but there's still more ground to cover.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Will this apply to sex slaves brought into the US?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

hey that might have some interesting implications.

[Havok]

Interesting. If someone is seeking asylum, and the reason is 'I don't want my clitoris chopped off by the men in my country', why the fuck should it matter if it is culturally acceptable or a tradition in their country? The woman is seeking asylum here, where it is absolutely NOT acceptable.

And on the subject of male circumcisions, IMO I don't think you can make the comparison of the two. You are not completely devastating the sex life of a male by chopping off the foreskin. It also to my knowledge does not happen at a time when there will be about a zero chance of having any memory of the act itself.
It also doesn't do much in the disfigurement department. A circumcised penis looks and functions just like an uncircumcised penis for the most part, (I'm not sure where the debate/issue on sensation or lack thereof stands) while FGM can almost completely remove all exterior signs of the female anatomy in the most severe cases.

[Simon_Jester]

Havok, I agree with your basic point completely, but:

And on the subject of male circumcisions, IMO I don't think you can make the comparison of the two. You are not completely devastating the sex life of a male by chopping off the foreskin. It also to my knowledge does not happen at a time when there will be about a zero chance of having any memory of the act itself.

Point of order: we've got a thread over in SLAM arguing about the ethics of spanking. If spanking infants is child abuse (and a fairly large proportion of Americans think so), why is circumcision of male infants not child abuse? If nothing else, it's got to hurt a LOT more...

[Havok]

Havok, I agree with your basic point completely, but:

And on the subject of male circumcisions, IMO I don't think you can make the comparison of the two. You are not completely devastating the sex life of a male by chopping off the foreskin. It also to my knowledge does not happen at a time when there will be about a zero chance of having any memory of the act itself.

Point of order: we've got a thread over in SLAM arguing about the ethics of spanking. If spanking infants is child abuse (and a fairly large proportion of Americans think so), why is circumcision of male infants not child abuse? If nothing else, it's got to hurt a LOT more...

Whether or not it is child abuse (I personally think circumcision comes damn close, if not outright is. Spanking an infant? Who the fuck does that?) doesn't matter. The point is, the two are just not comparable. Some boys grow up not even realizing that anything has been done. There is zero memory of it so it is almost a complete non issue. Whereas most FGM happens during puberty and later IIRC and the girls are damn well aware of it, and it causes intense pain and suffering that they are 100% sure to remember.

[Broomstick]

Interesting. If someone is seeking asylum, and the reason is 'I don't want my clitoris chopped off by the men in my country'

Nitpick: FGM is almost always performed by a woman, not a man. Just want to keep the facts straight on a volatile subject.

[Terralthra]

Whether or not it is child abuse (I personally think circumcision comes damn close, if not outright is. Spanking an infant? Who the fuck does that?) doesn't matter. The point is, the two are just not comparable. Some boys grow up not even realizing that anything has been done. There is zero memory of it so it is almost a complete non issue. Whereas most FGM happens during puberty and later IIRC and the girls are damn well aware of it, and it causes intense pain and suffering that they are 100% sure to remember.

So, female genital mutilation wouldn't be mutilating if done in infancy? I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here.

[Rahvin]

Interesting. If someone is seeking asylum, and the reason is 'I don't want my clitoris chopped off by the men in my country'

Nitpick: FGM is almost always performed by a woman, not a man. Just want to keep the facts straight on a volatile subject.

FGM also doesn't always involve removal of the clitoris. There are several different methods practiced - all of them abhorrent, of course.

I've always wondered about the fact that women are usually the ones who perform FGM. I just cannot comprehend why they all continue to perpetuate the practice, despite knowing firsthand how barbarous and painful the procedure is. Cultural perceptions of "normal" seem to have an unfortunately strong sway over humanity.

[Flameblade]

Whether or not it is child abuse (I personally think circumcision comes damn close, if not outright is. Spanking an infant? Who the fuck does that?) doesn't matter. The point is, the two are just not comparable. Some boys grow up not even realizing that anything has been done. There is zero memory of it so it is almost a complete non issue. Whereas most FGM happens during puberty and later IIRC and the girls are damn well aware of it, and it causes intense pain and suffering that they are 100% sure to remember.

So, female genital mutilation wouldn't be mutilating if done in infancy? I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here.

That's along the lines of arguing that it's okay that you cut someone's hand off, as long as you slipped them some roofies first. And while we're at it:

Havok, I agree with your basic point completely, but:

And on the subject of male circumcisions, IMO I don't think you can make the comparison of the two. You are not completely devastating the sex life of a male by chopping off the foreskin. It also to my knowledge does not happen at a time when there will be about a zero chance of having any memory of the act itself.

Point of order: we've got a thread over in SLAM arguing about the ethics of spanking. If spanking infants is child abuse (and a fairly large proportion of Americans think so), why is circumcision of male infants not child abuse? If nothing else, it's got to hurt a LOT more...

Whether or not it is child abuse (I personally think circumcision comes damn close, if not outright is. Spanking an infant? Who the fuck does that?) doesn't matter. The point is, the two are just not comparable. Some boys grow up not even realizing that anything has been done. There is zero memory of it so it is almost a complete non issue. Whereas most FGM happens during puberty and later IIRC and the girls are damn well aware of it, and it causes intense pain and suffering that they are 100% sure to remember.

This is like arguing that its okay to cut off a couple of fingers because, hey, at least it wasn't both of your hands. Seriously, in what way is that sane or moral?

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Pragmatically speaking, fgm is far worse than circumcision. But that's about the same as saying losing a finger is a lot better than losing a whole hand. But the fact remains that unless there is a pressing medical need for it, doing it without someone's consent is highly immoral. If we cut two fingers off a newborn infant's right hand and it grew up with no memory of that specific event, would that suddenly make it okay?