We have heard amazing stories about people who have found a safe haven in the United States through the process of political asylum. We praise the Obama administration for trying to expand this program to include victims of domestic violence.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention reports that nearly 5.3 million “intimate partner victimizations” of women age 18 and over occur each year. That’s just in the U.S. Imagine the numbers of victims on a global scale.
One story that should rip your guts out is Guatemalan refugee Rody Alvarado Peña’s plight. Alvarado, who was a victim of severe spousal abuse while in her home country, has been in a legal battle, seeking protection in the U.S., since 1995 when she arrived.
Alvarado was a teen wife in Guatemala, married to former Guatemalan soldier Francisco Osorio. When they married, she was barely 16 years old and he was 21. Osorio inflicted violent abuse on his wife for more than a decade.
Almost as soon as they were married, Osorio started threatening and beating his wife. He raped and sodomized her, slammed her head through windows and mirrors, broke her jaw and tried to abort her child by kicking her in the spine.
At one point she tried to flee the abuse within Guatemala, but police refused to intervene because it was a “domestic” matter.
Police returned Alvarado to her husband and, documents used in her fight to gain asylum show, Osorio beat, kicked, pistol-whipped and threatened her with a machete, vowing he would cut off her arms and legs if she ever tried to leave him again.
Fearing for her life, she fled to the United States to find both refuge and medical help, leaving her two children behind. She was granted asylum in 1996, but the Immigration and Naturalization Service appealed to a higher court.
Even though the Bureau of Immigration Appeals believed her testimony about the abuse, it reversed the decision and ordered her deportation to Guatemala, where her husband swore he would “hunt her down and kill her,” according to the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies.
Alvarado’s case has brought up numerous questions about asylum and battered women. Are battered women in other countries considered persecuted? Can foreign battered women somehow find a safe haven in the United States? So far, the Obama administration is saying, “Yes,” to both questions.
Critics claim domestic violence-based asylum opens up a door to illegal immigration. They argue that when women in foreign countries become aware of the potential to enter the U.S. because of claims of abuse, it will lead to a bevy of false claims of abuse to skirt immigration laws.
Whether or not opposing claims are valid, we must remind ourselves of the many benefits that will come out of this. Women and children in danger of violent domestic abuse should be able to rely on the compassion we boast as part of our national pride.
This case has yet to be resolved by an immigration judge but — because the White House has shown empathy and compassion — Alvarado and other victims have a glimmer of hope.
This is a great leap by the Obama administration. Political asylum for survivors of domestic violence is important. Taking these victims in shows the world we care deeply enough to open our protective arms.