Women in Massachusetts who suffer from psychological, sexual or physical abuse often keep their pain secret. Threats of deportation compound fears among abused immigrant women, who may not know that U.S. immigration laws can protect them.
Experts say women immigrants frequently believe that reaching out for help from authorities will set off a legal status dispute ending with deportation. Abusive boyfriends and spouses use the threat to withhold or withdraw women's green card sponsorships as a method of control.
Battered women immigrants often fail to seek assistance until violence is so obvious and severe that there is no other choice. Foreign-born women frequently learn in hospital emergency rooms about the existence of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act and U visas.
Under the Violence Against Women Act, undocumented battered women are free to apply for legal status and work permits to establish economic independence. The five-year-old U visa is issued to crime victims who help police and the court system prosecute offenders. The U visa is valuable for women who have been forced to leave their children with relatives in a native country. Once the visa is issued, a woman can use the new resident status to sponsor legal immigration for her children.
It is also possible for an immigrant to come to the U.S. legally to escape abuse in a native land through the application for asylum. The asylum track to permanent residency is more difficult than the U visa for abuse victims, but it does exist.
Immigration by asylum is predominantly reserved for people who suffer for religious, social or political reasons in their homeland, but courts have accepted proven abuse as a form of persecution. For example, asylum was granted to an African woman in a 1996 case due to sexual abuse.
Source: Washington Post, "For battered immigrant women, fear of deportation becomes abusers' weapon, but 2 laws can overcome that," Pamela Constable, Feb. 9, 2012
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