Open-Border Asylum: Newfound Category of ‘Spousal Abuse Asylum’ Raises More Questions than It Answers

By Jon Feere
July 2010

Backgrounders and Reports
Download a pdf of this Backgrounder
http://www.cis.org/articles/2010/alvarado.pdf

Jon Feere is the Legal Policy Analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies.


Giving shelter to those fleeing persecution abroad has always been part of America’s welcoming immigration policy. Americans generally want to help people facing persecution overseas to the extent that they can, and our asylum system has been crafted to reflect this reality. Obviously there are practical limits and our laws require that certain thresholds be met before an individual claimant is granted asylum.

But for at least the past three decades, a number of activist-minded attorney groups have worked to expand opportunities for asylum, even if it means pushing analysis that contradicts the original intent and traditional interpretation of the law. For many of them, the battle over asylum seems to have less to do with giving shelter to persecuted individuals than with a larger quest to remake American legal norms, establish victim status for a number of officially recognized groups, and overhaul American society more generally.1 For others, it is simply a matter of creating job security for immigration attorneys and “rightsâ€