I love it when I’m right!
Relevant part of the recent BIA ruling highlighted
Earlier this semester, I worked my tail off researching asylum law as it pertains to female genital mutilation. My two issues were whether an applicant could qualify for a grant of asylum under a “humanitarian exception” (i.e. her circumstances were so bad that no matter what kind of persecution she feared or didn’t fear in her home country there was no way we should send her back) or under the Convention Against Torture (sort of like the humanitarian exception, but sanctioned by the UN and for circumstances even worse than might qualify under the humanitarian exception).
The law is unsettled in this area, but I predicted that the client for this particular application would qualify under the humanitarian exception. And wouldn’t you know it? The BIA agreed with me today! Yea!
The whole big memo I wrote is available here, if you have insatiable curiosity about the issue.
Comments:
Wow, that was a lot of work, and difficult subject matter.
What floors me is the extent of “red tape” that there is to extend protection to people who need it. For a person facing deportation it seems inhumane to have to prove the severity of one’s circumstances and then face the possibilty of being deemed “not severe enough” to qualify. Any person who has experienced harm at the hands of others knows that there are always lasting effects. Having a court rule that a person’s experience wasn’t really that bad seems to downplay any atrocity that that person faced.
Carry, I am glad to hear that the courts are tending to rule on the side of the female victims of FGM. From a purely humanistic perspecitve it only seems the right thing to do.
It’s natural to feel sympathy for these women, but imagine the US if we didn’t have that much “red tape.” It would be a very easy system to abuse. Finding the right balance between justice for those that need it and abuse of the law is what it’s all about. As Professor Crim Law would ask: Where on the continuum of merely bad and really bad does this fall and where do we draw the line? Not an easy task, I assure you.
The court’s rulings re: FGM are unfortunately a product of our male biased legal system. Imagine if you were a guy judge who heard the person before you had undergone female circumcision and you didn’t know anything about it. Do you think he would think it amounted to persecution? If male circumcision isn’t that bad, why should we be worried about female circumcision.
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