Molly Redden on the troubles women face in the US asylum system: -Erika I meet Melanie, 23, at the DC office of the immigration attorney whos been handling her quest for for asylum here in the United States. She is zaftig and chic. Her fingernails, big enamel earrings, and the tips of her Afro are all the same brilliant shade of scarlet. From our chitchat, I can tell that on a normal day, she is calm, and collected. But not today. Were here for her to recall the worst hours of her life. It started when she was 19, Melanie tells me. Josef, a powerful friend of her fathers who is the head of her sub-Saharan countrys intelligence service, began sending her lascivious text messages: I love you. Will you go out with me? You have to see me. When she changed her number, she says, he used his power as intelligence chief to find her new number. (At her request, we have changed both their names and withheld the name of her country.) When she ignored him, men in street clothes pulled her into a car and drove her to his office, where he threatened her with death if she didnt sleep with him. Her father soon lost his position with a national company, Melanie says, and he spent weeks in jail. How about the police? I ask. Melanie snorts. Theres no calling the police. The police work for him. Last summer, according to the account Melanie provided in her asylum application, Josef called her while she was jogging. He said he would see her soon. Two men appeared and dragged Melanie into a car as she writhed and screamed for help. They drove her to the outskirts of the city, where Josef was waiting. Now you understand that I get what I want, he said, Melanie recalls. He kicked her in the stomach and raped her. In the summer of 2013, two months after her rape, Melanie obtained a student visa to attend college in the United States. But she didnt have the money to go to school. Instead, upon getting off the plane, she petitioned the government to grant her asylum. And with that, Melanie became part of a roiling dispute over the place of women in asylum law. In order to win asylum in the United States, its not enough to have suffered, or even to have suffered at the hands of your government. Asylum seekers have to show that their persecution is the result of their membership in a racial, religious, national, political, or social group. This last category functions like a catch-all for groups that arent captured in the language of the law. Immigration attorneys have had success using the social group designation to protect gay and lesbian asylum seekers, for example, going back to the 1970s. But US immigration courts are furiously divided over what this means for someone like Melanie: Should being a woman count?
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 19:37:00 +0000
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