{"id":703,"date":"2004-03-17T14:08:10","date_gmt":"2004-03-17T22:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/03\/17\/ashcroft-may-do-the-right-thing-on-battered-women-seeking-asylum\/"},"modified":"2004-03-17T14:08:10","modified_gmt":"2004-03-17T22:08:10","slug":"ashcroft-may-do-the-right-thing-on-battered-women-seeking-asylum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=703","title":{"rendered":"Ashcroft may do the right thing on battered women seeking asylum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost a year ago, I drew this cartoon<\/a>. The subject was abused women who apply for asylum in the United States; Janet Reno changed the US’s asylum rules to include battered women, but left office before finalizing her changes, and Ashcroft was considering changing them back. The particular case at issue was the case of Rodi Alvarado, a woman fleeing an abusive husband in Guatimala.<\/p>\n

At the time, I wrote <\/a>“Of course, the administration hasn’t officially made its decision yet; it could be that they’ll decide to be humane, in which case this cartoon will be wrongheaded and a bit embarrassing. But that’s some egg I’d be pleased to have to wipe off my face.”<\/p>\n

It’s too soon to know for sure, but it looks possible that I’ll be wiping my face soon. From The New York Times<\/i><\/a> (via Diotima<\/a>):<\/p>\n

If approved, the rules would for the first time recognize severe cases of domestic violence as equivalent in certain instances to more familiar asylum cases involving political and religious persecution.<\/p>\n

Department [of Homeland Security] officials have passed along their recommendations in a 43-page legal brief to Attorney General John Ashcroft, who will make the final decision. The officials have urged Mr. Ashcroft to allow the department to put in place rules governing such cases and have called for Rodi Alvarado Pe\u00f1a of Guatemala, whose case gave rise to the recommendations, to be granted asylum.<\/p>\n

Justice Department officials say Mr. Ashcroft is still considering the issue, which has been roiling the immigration courts since a small but growing number of such cases began appearing in the 1990’s. Some Justice Department officials indicated that Mr. Ashcroft had initially opposed such rules, but a former senior administration official familiar with the issue said he believed that Mr. Ashcroft would approve the proposal, given the considerable pressure from conservative groups and the Homeland Security Department.<\/p>\n

More than 36 Democrats in Congress, as well as leaders of conservative-minded groups like Concerned Women for America, and World Relief, an arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, have urged government officials to rule in favor of Mrs. Alvarado and women like her. [Feminist and lefty groups have also been speaking out about this – and have been doing so for years – but you’d never know that from reading the <\/i>Times <\/i>story. -Amp]<\/div>\n

That’s great news. And – wonder of wonders – I agree with the Concerned Women for America, who wrote Ashcroft that giving \u201crefuge to such a woman as this is exactly what our asylum policy exists for, and to turn her away would be an act of pointless cruelty.\u201d Exactly right.<\/p>\n

It’s nice as well that some Conservative groups are on the right side of this issue; with this administration, the pressure from Conservative groups is the pressure that counts.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

I wrote what I thought was a pretty good post on this issue<\/a> last year, so I’ll be all self-promoty and stick in a link to it here..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Almost a year ago, I drew this cartoon. The subject was abused women who apply for asylum in the United States; Janet Reno changed the US’s asylum rules to include battered women, but left office before finalizing her changes, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism-sexism-etc","category-immigration-migrant-rights-etc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}