By Jennifer Warren
“The woman came in wearing rubber gloves,” she told a room full of attorneys at a meeting last week, “because her hands were so badly cut from stopping the knife he tried to kill her with.”
Like many battered women who have yet to receive their U.S. citizenship, this woman feared leaving her abusive husband – her sponsor – for fear of being deported.
Last Thursday night 29 attorneys filed into the Queens County Bar Association's frigid basement in Jamaica to hear Newman and others versed in the field teach a class on providing legal aid to battered immigrant women. The lawyers were taught to interview clients and prepare immigration applications that would bypass a spouse's sponsorship.
1990 Census data show that Queens, with 330,619 foreign-born women over the age of 18, surpassed every other borough in that category and is a county where incidents of immigrant domestic abuse are of particular concern, said Suzanne Tomatore, director of the CUNY-based Immigrant Community Domestic Violence Project, one of the many organizations that sponsored the evening's course.
When immigrating to the United States, a woman often finds herself relying solely on her husband for sponsorship, Newman said. Until recently the right to petition for residency by federal law had belonged only to the U.S.-citizen spouse or other sponsor, she said.
“The immigrant coming in has no rights,” she said. “I can't think of another situation in which one person holds more control over another. It's really a setup for disaster.”
One husband, she said, told his wife he had locked her inside the house all day with an activated alarm and forbade her to leave. She was held captive in her home for six months before she realized he had lied.
Other husbands refuse to let their wives work, or take English classes. One husband attended a final INS interview with his wife, but deliberately left enough doubt in the interviewer's mind about the validity of the marriage to fail the interview.
And then there was the sexual abuse which was rarely volunteered by the clients.
“You're going to have to do some very gentle digging with them,” Newman told the class.
Not long ago, there were few options for a battered woman without residency papers. But in 1995, with the passing of the Violence Against Women Act, a special provision was made for non-U.S. citizens who lived with their husbands in the United States and who suffered abuse, whether physical or psychological.
The act allowed a woman to file for self-petition – self- sponsorship – if the abused woman could prove that the abuse existed, she was in a lawful marriage to her knowledge, she lived with her husband in the United States, and she was of good moral character.
If she could prove her case, she was no longer dependent upon her spouse for citizenship.
“She has won a new basis for her residency,” Newman said. “It restores her to where she would have been if not for the abuser.”
Last fall the Immigrant Community Domestic Violence Project, a program that helps women file for self-petitions, was launched. Headed by Tomatore and based out of CUNY, the program is designed to steer abused immigrant women through the self-petition process.
The need for attorneys specially trained in the delicate matter, however, exceeded what the project's staff could provide. In the five months since the program's inception, 20 clients have been placed with attorneys, but there are many more who need representation.
To contact the Immigrant Community Domestic Violence Project call: 718-340-4336. For general immigration assistance contact the CUNY School of Law Immigrant Initiatives program: 718 340-4200.
