If you are a member of any of these groups, you may qualify for protection from deportation under several remedies to assure that you will not be persecuted, tortured, or killed in your home country. You will also receive a work permit and the possibility to apply for U.S. citizenship if you qualify for asylum. You must apply for asylum within one year of your last arrival in the United States, with some exceptions.  We provide consultations to assure you do not lose important legal rights. Even if you do not qualify for asylum, you may still qualify for withholding of deportation/removal or protection under The Convention Against Torture. It is critical that you receive counsel so you can avail yourself of these valuable protections. Never sign any documents or agree to deportation before you have consulted a human rights attorney. Say these words to all immigration officials, "I am afraid to return to my country." They will stop the deportation and give you time to consult an attorney about your case.

 

Contact us immediately to review your case.

 

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PUEDO OBTENER ASILO EN LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS?

 

 

Responses to some frequently asked questions and frequently held concerns
 

 

What happens to similar people in your home country?

Find out by researching country conditions at the following sites: 

for a thorough discussion of asylum for an effeminate male from Mexico.

 

In 1996, the INS Office of General Counsel issued a memorandum entitled, "Seropositivity for HIV and relief from deportation" discussing the recommendations of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. The recommendations included, "When permitted by statute, the INS and Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) should grant stays of deportation, suspension of deportation, extended voluntary departure, deferred action, and asylum based on the social group category of HIV-positive individuals.  The INS Office of General Counsel concluded, "Seropositivity for HIV shall be considered in requests for discretionary forms of relief from deportation, and claims for asylum and withholding of deportation based upon membership in a particular social group shall be handled in accordance with the attached discussion on that subject prepared at the request of the White House."  See 73 Interpreter Releases 909 and 910

 

 

Millions of women throughout the world live in conditions of abject deprivation of, and attacks against, their fundamental human rights for no other reason than that they are women.

Combatants and their sympathizers in conflicts, such as those in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, and Rwanda, have raped women as a weapon of war with near complete impunity. Men in Pakistan, South Africa, Peru, Russia, and Uzbekistan beat women in the home at astounding rates, while these governments alternatively refuse to intervene to protect women and punish their batterers or do so haphazardly and in ways that make women feel culpable for the violence. As a direct result of inequalities found in their countries of origin, women from Ukraine, Moldova, Nigeria, the Dominican Republic, Burma, and Thailand are bought and sold, trafficked to work in forced prostitution, with insufficient government attention to protect their rights and punish the traffickers. In Guatemala, South Africa, and Mexico, women's ability to enter and remain in the work force is obstructed by private employers who use women's reproductive status to exclude them from work and by discriminatory employment laws or discriminatory enforcement of the law. In the U.S., students discriminate against and attack girls in school who are lesbian, bi-sexual, or transgendered, or do not conform to male standards of female behavior. Women in Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia face government-sponsored discrimination that renders them unequal before the law - including discriminatory family codes that take away women's legal authority and place it in the hands of male family members - and restricts women's participation in public life.

Abuses against women are relentless, systematic, and widely tolerated, if not explicitly condoned. Violence and discrimination against women are global social epidemics, notwithstanding the very real progress of the international women's human rights movement in identifying, raising awareness about, and challenging impunity for women's human rights violations.

We live in a world in which women do not have basic control over what happens to their bodies. Millions of women and girls are forced to marry and have sex with men they do not desire. Women are unable to depend on the government to protect them from physical violence in the home, with sometimes fatal consequences, including increased risk of HIV/AIDS infection. Women in state custody face sexual assault by their jailers. Women are punished for having sex outside of marriage or with a person of their choosing (rather than of their family's choosing). Husbands and other male family members obstruct or dictate women's access to reproductive health care. Doctors and government officials disproportionately target women from disadvantaged or marginalized communities for coercive family planning policies.

We must expose and denounce as human rights violations those practices and policies that silence and subordinate women. We must reject specific legal, cultural, or religious practices by which women are systematically discriminated against, excluded from political participation and public life, segregated in their daily lives, raped in armed conflict, beaten in their homes, denied equal divorce or inheritance rights, killed for having sex, forced to marry, assaulted for not conforming to gender norms, and sold into forced labor. Arguments that sustain and excuse these human rights abuses - those of cultural norms, "appropriate" rights for women, or western imperialism - barely disguise their true meaning: that women's lives matter less than men's. Cultural relativism, which argues that there are no universal human rights and that rights are culture-specific and culturally determined, is still a formidable and corrosive challenge to women's rights to equality and dignity in all facets of their lives.

The Gender Rights Asylum Project fights against the dehumanization and marginalization of women. We promote women's equal rights and human dignity. The realization of women's rights is a global struggle based on universal human rights and the rule of law. It requires all of us to unite in solidarity to end traditions, practices, and laws that harm women. It is a fight for freedom to be fully and completely human and equal without apology or permission. Ultimately, the struggle for women's human rights must be about making women's lives matter everywhere all the time. In practice, this means taking action to stop discrimination and violence against women.

Female genital mutilation

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is an umbrella term for a number of culturally motivated practices that involve partial or complete cutting of female genitals, usually performed in childhood or adolescence. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that between 100 and 140 million women and girls have undergone FGM and that about 2 million more are added to that number each year. According to WHO, the practice is widespread in twenty-eight African countries, which account for the vast majority of FGM cases worldwide, with Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Somalia, Djibouti, Sudan, Liberia and Sierra Leone among the countries in which more than 40 percent of girls are estimated to be affected. Some 15 percent of women and girls who have undergone FGM have suffered the most severe form, infibulation, whereby the clitoris and labia are removed and the vaginal opening is stitched shut, leaving only a small space. But over 80 percent of FGM cases in Somalia, Djibouti, and Sudan involve infibulation. Although few clinical studies have been conducted, it is clear that at least some forms of FGM increase the HIV transmission risk faced by women and girls, both in that unsterile instruments may be used in the cutting and because some FGM is associated with chronic genital injury and tearing, ulceration, and delayed healing of injuries, all of which may increase HIV risk.

Twelve countries have criminalized FGM by law, including some of those noted above as having high prevalence of the practice. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, as of January 2003, perpetrators of FGM had been prosecuted only in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Senegal, and Sierra Leone among sub-Saharan countries. In spite of legislation, FGM gets little policy and program attention in Africa, and there is certainly little evidence that it is linked at the policy level to HIV/AIDS. Attention to HIV/AIDS programs and policy and to the importance of basic protections for women and girls provides an opportunity to energize decision-makers to enforce existing legislation and take other measures to limit the practice of FGM.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

 

 

 

An Excerpt from New York Law Journal (May 2003) describes asylum law involving domestic violence:

 

On March 10,2003, Judge Opaciuch concluded in his decision that Octavia was part of a "clearly definable social group," which he identified as "women in Guatemalan society who resist male domination by living independently and self-sufficiently."

The judge went on to cite a number of failures by Guatemalan authorities to assist Octavia's several attempts to protect herself and her children. His decision said INS attorneys argued that recently adopted laws in Guatemala had provided more protection for women. But based on U.S. government reports, the judge wrote, "Violence against women remains a problem in Guatemala."

Instead of the hour or two that an immigration judge ordinarily takes to issue an oral decision, Judge Opaciuch delayed his opinion for months. This worried Mr. Greene and Ms. Zachman and the other members of the Shearman team in Washington: associates Gabriela Vallejo, currently on maternity leave, and Mark Tanney, who recently left Shearman to join the Washington firm Gilbert, Heintz & Randolph.

Given the political backdrop in domestic abuse claims for asylum, Mr. Greene said cases such as Octavia's are increasingly difficult to try. Mr. Ashcroft has assumed direct involvement in the matter of yet another abused woman from Guatemala, which Ms. Dinnerstein and others fear may establish extremely difficult legal barriers.

Justice Department spokesman Jorge Martinez denied widespread claims that Mr. Ashcroft aims to thwart asylum claims based on gender. He blamed such perceptions on inaccurate media reports, despite a number of petitions reported to be lodged with the attorney general's office supporting Ms. Dinnerstein and other activists, signed by hundreds of Congressional members and religious leaders.

Mr. Martinez said new rules that Mr. Ashcroft is considering would merely improve the efficiency of immigration courts.

"The issues in asylum law are difficult to interpret," said Mr. Martinez, "and will be dealt with when these [new regulations] come out [to] help the judges make easier decisions."

Meanwhile, said Mr. Greene, a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center: "I'm a believer in immigrant rights. I believe immigrants are not the burden on society that certain parts of the political spectrum believe them to be."

He said further, "Immigrants are brave and hard-working people. As we went on [in the Octavia case], the details of her life kept us going."

With reference to the decision in the case, Mr. Greene added, "I thought [Judge Opaciuch] gave us a hard time on the stand. But in retrospect, given his really detailed, really thoughtful and supportive opinion, I think he was trying to lay a strong groundwork and satisfy himself that this was worth going out on a limb for."

Like Mr. Greene, Ms. Zachman said she became "very emotionally entrenched" in the case of Octavia.

"She is an inspiration," said Ms. Zachman of her client. An adverse ruling from the judge "really could have ravaged her life, and that of her two boys," she added.

"This was my first pro bono case. I had studied asylum law in school, and I'm very interested in gender issues and how that affects international law," said Ms. Zachman. "But until we got into this, I didn't think we'd have all these tough issues to deal with. I'm so glad we did it, though. It took a year and a half, but it's definitely rewarding."

Mr. Greene agreed. "I find corporate work rewarding and intellectually interesting," he said. "But taking on this project, even though it was a bit more than we signed on for, gave us social welfare satisfaction."

Ms. Dinnerstein would encourage other young lawyers to volunteer for such satisfaction.

"Asylum law has always provided creative opportunities for lawyers," she said. "Now in gender-related cases, you're seeing a lot of movement in the law. It's really cutting edge.

"This [Octavia] was a good case--a righteous case. I think the story here is that if you sit down and look at your case, you begin to realize that you can actually make it work."

With translation from Spanish by Fany Vargas, a Shearman secretary, Octavia offered her own assessment.

"I feel really grateful and happy about what [the lawyers] have done for me," said Octavia. "It's something I cannot explain. It's like a dream."

 

It is very important that you contact your congressional representatives and urge them to protect women refugees by preserving asylum for victims of gender-based persecution.