WOMEN-U.S: Jury Still Out on Reforms on Battered Immigrant Women

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Mar 18 1996 (IPS) - For many immigrant women who come to the United States, marriage can be a prison in which there is no escape from abuse.

Until last year, immigrant women entering the United States by marrying a U.S. citizen or permanent resident faced two choices if they wanted to escape from an abusive husband: leave the husband and country or stay and put up with the abuse.

Immigrant rights groups say a large, but unspecified, number of women opted for the second course, remaining silent in the face of battering and assault.

U.S. immigration law did not allow such women to leave their marriage and still qualify for a U.S. residency permit or ‘green card’.

Many immigrant communities bear witness to grisly stories of wives being raped or murdered after years of silence. In New York last September, one Bengali woman was doused with gasoline and set afire by an angry husband.

The “silence-or-departure” dilemma was supposed to change in January 1995, when President Bill Clinton signed the Violence Against Women Act.

Among other things, the law now allows immigrant women who face abuse to apply for green cards, even if they leave their husbands.

The new provision, called “self-petitioning,” allows women to apply by themselves for residency or work if they meet several requirements, says Rupal Oza, an advocate for ‘SAKHI,’ a group that helps South Asian women in New York,

A woman applying for the new status must have been married to a U.S. citizen or permanent resident for at least two years, and must be able to prove to the court that she was married “in good faith.” She also must prove abuse by her spouse, Oza adds.

The problem, say activists who work with battered women, is that the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) has not yet outlined how it will implement the new policy on battered women.

An INS spokesman told IPS that the agency is still studying the new legislation and preparing its implementation, but has yet to announce specific steps.

“The INS has been dragging its feet,” charges Prema Vohra, programme coordinator of SAKHI. “The law was passed in January 1995 (but) they have not processed any cases whatsoever.”

As a result, “the hands of advocates and lawyers working on behalf of abused women are tied,” says Roseann Micallef, executive director of New York’s Centre for Immigrant Rights.

And, with the U.S. Congress considering new legislation to restrict immigration further, immigrant women seeking an end to abusive marriages may find it even harder to stay in the United States.

The Violence Against Women Act nevertheless represents a potentially great advance for battered women, activists say.

“It’s a very positive step,” Vohra argues, noting that, once implemented, it may finally allow escape from marriages held together only by the prospect of deportation.

Unfortunately, women married to permanent residents cannot leave their husbands and still work in the United States, says Vohra.

The restriction is clearly a mixed message to many immigrant women, Micallef says. “It does recognise and help immigrant women take the first steps to leave,” she says. “But to say to some women, ‘You can leave, but you can’t support yourself,’ doesn’t help much.”

Significant other challenges confront immigrant women who try to leave abusive spouses, including discrimination from people ranging from members of their community to court-appointed lawyers to court interpreters, says Vohra.

“Some lawyers say things like, ‘This might happen in your culture, but it doesn’t happen here’. It’s completely unwarranted and frankly offensive,” Oza says.

But Oza adds that the problems with court interpreters are much more serious. Among her own experiences with Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi clients, Vohra can cite examples of supposedly impartial court interpreters who translate women’s stories of abuse from Hindi and Bengali — and then inform spouses about what was said.

As a result, Oza says she insists on interpreting her own clients’ statements rather than take the risk of using an interpreter who may be biased towards the husband.

Because of pervasive silence from many victims, few hard statistics exist on immigrant women who have suffered abuse. ‘SAKHI’ deals with some 35 battered women each month, from among the roughly 200,000 South Asians in the greater New York area.

The Centre for Immigrants Rights reports similar, and steadily rising, numbers of women using its weekly hotline for domestic abuse in the immigrant community.

In the United States as a whole, violence against women — particularly by family members — remains pervasive.

A study by the U.S. Justice Department indicates that violence against women by “intimates” — family members or close acquaintances — affects nine out of every 1,000 women each year.

The study also estimates that there were five million acts of violence against girls and women over the age of 12 in 1992 and 1993 alone.

Increasing information about the extent of abuse, spurred by high-profile cases like the trial of ex-football star O.J. Simpson for the murder of his former wife, has spurred new domestic violence legislation.

Micallef credits the heightened consciousness about battered spouses as a factor in generating new rights in favour of abused immigrant women, particularly when anti-immigrant sentiments are on the rise.

“The new domestic violence law in the United States is considered fairly comprehensive,” says Rebecca Sewall, Senior Fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Women, Law and Development. Sewall notes many countries are using the act as a model for future legislation.

For immigrant women in the United States, however, the promise of improvements remains “more rhetoric than action,” Vohra says. For now, advocates say, the ball remains in the INS’s court.