In granting U.S. asylum to a Guatemalan woman who said she was a victim of domestic violence, the Department of Justice’s Board of Immigration Appeals may have created an incentive for more women from Guatemala and other nations to seek similar claims. The ruling applies to Guatemalan women who crossed the border in the recent surge if they can demonstrate they were victims of domestic violence.
Foreign nationals can win asylum in the United States if they can prove in court that they suffered persecution or fear that they will suffer persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. The Board applied the latter category in this case.
The Board’s ruling said, “Depending on the facts and evidence in an individual case, ‘married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship’ can constitute a cognizable particular social group that forms the basis of a claim for asylum or withholding of removal.”
Prior to the Obama Administration, victims of domestic violence did not count as a “social group” for asylum purposes. Since then, married women from El Salvador were recognized as a “social group” so the asylum avenue is already available to such women who crossed in the recent surge.
The number of people granted asylum has grown dramatically in the last few years and the board’s ruling likely will increase the pace. Plus the Daily Caller reports that the decision could be used as a precedent in future claims lodged on behalf of women from South America, Africa and Asia.
On Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto, ” Steve Camarota from the Center for Immigration Studies said, “This [ruling] potentially affects tens or hundreds of millions of women in the world [who] would now have immigration rights to come and apply for asylum because they have difficult family circumstances, and they live in a society that doesn’t take domestic violence as seriously as we do. It’s a gross distortion of what immigration judges are supposed to do, and it’s potentially going to encourage a lot more people to come in illegally and then apply for this.”
See more in the Daily Caller.
