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  1. #1
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    Gay Mexican Immigrant Seeks Asylum

    http://www.outinamerica.com/home/news.a ... cleid=7191


    Gay Mexican Immigrant Seeks Asylum
    OIA Newsdesk
    LOS ANGELES - Lambda Legal urged earlier this week a federal appeals court to grant asylum to a man who faced severe antigay persecution in his native Mexico but was rejected for asylum by an immigration judge who said he didn't seem gay and could hide his sexual orientation to avoid persecution.

    Lambda Legal represents Jorge Soto Vega, a 35-year-old man from Tuxpan, Mexico, who faced severe harassment and violence from the community and his family from an early age. He was detained and beaten severely by police who threatened to kill him if they saw him again because they wanted to get rid of gay people.

    Last year, a Southern California immigration judge ruled that there was credible evidence that Soto Vega was persecuted in Mexico because of his sexual orientation, but rejected his application for asylum in the U.S., saying Soto Vega didn't appear gay to him and could keep his sexual orientation hidden if he chose to.

    Lambda Legal, which supported Soto Vega's unsuccessful effort to reverse that ruling at the Board of Immigration Appeals last year, is now representing Soto Vega in an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco. The 56-page brief Lambda Legal filed today asks the federal appeals court to reverse the immigration judge's ruling and order federal officials to process Soto Vega's asylum application.

    "People are granted asylum in the U.S. because they face persecution in their home countries based on religion, political beliefs, sexual orientation, gender and other factors that are part of their basic identity. We grant people asylum in America because their countries have told them they have to change who they are in order to be safe," said Jon Davidson, Senior Counsel for Lambda Legal and the lead attorney on the case.

    "The basic premise of asylum is in question when an immigration judge recognizes that a man is being persecuted and sends him back to the country telling him to disguise the very characteristic that leads to persecution and makes him eligible for asylum. The immigration judge's ruling is deeply disturbing and misguided, and we intend to secure asylum for Jorge Soto Vega," he said.

    In January 2003, an immigration judge in Los Angeles who heard testimony from Soto Vega and others ruled that he must return to Mexico. While saying Soto Vega's testimony was credible, the judge said that he did not meet the criteria for asylum because he could hide his sexual orientation and could live in parts of Mexico that were not as hostile to gay people.

    "[I]t seems to me that if he returned to Mexico in some other community, that it would not be obvious that he would be homosexual unless he made that ... obvious himself," the judge ruled.

    Lambda Legal said the public and law enforcement officials in much of Mexico continue to harass and assault gay people. Soto Vega's basic rights would be violated if he was forced to behave differently in order to avoid appearing gay, Lambda Legal argues.

    "Asylum doesn't hinge on whether people can hide their religion or political beliefs or race or sexual orientation -- it's decided on whether they face persecution based on those factors, and Jorge Soto Vega clearly does," Davidson said.

    Lambda Legal, which argued the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case striking down sodomy laws last year, said that ruling makes it clear that Soto Vega has a right to maintain same-sex relationships without government interference -- a right that would be infringed on if he were forced not to be in a relationship with a man in order to avoid disclosing that he is gay. Lambda Legal also cites a number of previous cases of people who were granted asylum for a variety of reasons and weren't told to go back to their countries and hide their identities or beliefs in order to avoid persecution.

    Soto Vega left his small hometown of Tuxpan for the more cosmopolitan city of Guadalajara in his late teens to attend junior college. But after an altercation with the police where he was beaten, robbed and threatened with his life, Soto Vega left Mexico for the U.S. He lived in Los Angeles for 15 years and ran a flower and interior design shop with his partner, who is an American citizen.

    In 2001, Soto Vega returned to Mexico for his mother's funeral. Although his mother left him the family grocery store business, he feared for his safety and left Mexico. Soto Vega paid to be smuggled back into the U.S., spending hours in the trunk of a car, and filed for asylum within a year. He remains in the U.S. while his case is being appealed.

    The U.S. Department of Justice, which defends immigration decisions, has 30 days to file a reply to today's filing in the federal appeals court.

    Davidson and Jack Senterfit, Senior Staff Attorney in Lambda Legal's Southern Regional Office, are the attorneys in Soto Vega v. Ashcroft. [10/28/04]

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    URL: http://www.outinamerica.com/home/news.a ... cleid=7191
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  2. #2
    Senior Member IndianaJones's Avatar
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    Give me a break would ya? There's as much gay bias in this country as anywhere else.
    We are NOT a nation of immigrants!

  3. #3
    Senior Member CheyenneWoman's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by IndianaJones
    Give me a break would ya? There's as much gay bias in this country as anywhere else.
    Took the words right out of my mouth. What a crock!!!

  4. #4
    Senior Member Dixie's Avatar
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    The closet awaits your arrival in Mexico.

    Dixie
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  5. #5
    Senior Member lsmith1338's Avatar
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    How did I know that at some point this would enter the illegal alien arena, the old every excuse in the book routine
    Freedom isn't free... Don't forget the men who died and gave that right to all of us....
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  6. #6
    Senior Member WavTek's Avatar
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    I'VE HEARD IT ALL NOW.
    REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER!

  7. #7
    Senior Member dman1200's Avatar
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    Yeah, your gay, and your point is what?
    Please support our fight against illegal immigration by joining ALIPAC's email alerts here https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  8. #8
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    I think that if the Mexican election is overturned we are going to have about 20M+ asylum seekers here. It is a much shorter path top the money.
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  9. #9
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    http://www.gaycitynews.com/gcn_535/thir ... sylum.html
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Volume 5, Number 35 | August 31 - September 6, 2006


    LEGAL


    Third Recent Gay Asylum Win


    Federal panel in San Francisco finds Mexican immigrant’s claim unjustly refused

    BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD


    Francisco Ornelas-Chavez, a gay man from Mexico who presents what a judge termed a “female sexual identity,” has become the third LGBT applicant in recent weeks to win a new hearing before an Immigration Judge on his claim for political asylum.


    A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, ruled on August 21 that immigration authorities used the wrong legal standard to decide his case. The ruling reversed a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals, an internal Homeland Security panel.


    According to Senior Circuit Judge James R. Browning’s opinion, Ornelas-Chavez came to the U.S. illegally in 1998 “to escape a lifetime of abuse suffered on account of his female sexual identity.” That finding placed him within a “particular social group”—gay female-identified men from Mexico—previously ruled entitled to asylum protection by the 9th Circuit.


    Browning wrote in detail about Ornelas-Chavez’s “abuse in his youth because of his homosexuality and female sexual identity.”


    “Once, his father conspired with a friend to humiliate Ornelas-Chavez by permitting the friend to rape the boy after drugging him.” Brown wrote, who also noted that the man’s father arranged with the local police chief to detain his son in jail to “teach him to behave,” and threaten him with re-arrest if he continued having sex with men. Rape and assault from relatives, schoolmates, and co-workers plagued Ornelas-Chavez. Working as a corrections officer at a prison, he was nearly smothered with a pillow by his co-workers who were “finally going to get rid of another homo,” according to Browning’s opinion. The man also testified that two of his gay friends were gruesomely murdered by police.


    Ornelas-Chavez fared better living with a sympathetic aunt in Mexicali beginning in 1993, but in 1998 when his father learned of his whereabouts, he traveled there and beat his son severely, breaking his nose with a bottle.


    Soon after, Ornelas-Chavez left Mexico for the United States.”


    The man came to the attention of U.S. immigration authorities in 2003, and the government moved to deport him. Ornelas-Chavez filed his application for asylum, which required that he show a reasonable fear of official persecution if forced to return to Mexico.


    The Immigration Judge did not question the truth of Ornelas-Chavez’s story, but ruled against him, finding that he had “provided no evidence” that his suffering was due to government actions. The Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that Ornelas-Chavez had suffered only one instance of harm that was relevant—his detention by police at his father’s request and even that did not “rise to the level of persecution.” The rest of his suffering was at the hands of private citizens and thus irrelevant to his petition, the appeals board found.


    This problem hobbles many gay asylum applicants who face merciless persecution from their families and other private citizens in their home countries. The rules governing political asylum focus on official persecution. Applicants from countries that claim to be tolerant may have a very difficult time winning asylum. Persecution by private individuals is only taken into account when there is evidence that the government encouraged, tolerated, or failed to stop the abuse.


    Also, asylum is intended to protect persecuted individuals from future abuse, so the question is not whether conditions at the time justified an immigrant’s decision to flee their home country, but rather whether they remain bad enough to make fears of future persecution reasonable.


    Circuit Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain, in dissent, pointed to the substantial change in the legal rights of gay people in Mexico in recent years. Since Ornelas-Chavez fled the country, the federal government has banned sexual orientation discrimination and worked to protect children from abusive parents. The country has more openly gay people, some of whom are gaining respect in the professions and government, O’Scannlain maintained. The State Department reports on Mexico indicate a much more accepting atmosphere today than a decade ago. This evidence cuts against Ornelas-Chavez’s claim he has a reasonable belief he would face official persecution on his return, though his past abuse came not only from being gay but also because of his feminine gender presentation.


    The 9th circuit panel majority, in contrast, scrutinized the emphasis the Immigration Judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals placed on Ornelas-Chavez’s failure to report his abuse and rape to law enforcement authorities. The man himself testified that law enforcement authorities were part of the problem—he feared he would be beat up or even imprisoned if he went public with his suffering.


    Browning pointed out that federal law does not require that an asylum applicant show a record of reporting persecution to authorities. “In fact,” he wrote, “any such requirement would contradict the BIA’s own precedent,” where such reporting might be futile or even dangerous. Browning noted that when Ornelas-Chavez reported his abuse while a public prison employee, he was in effect informing the government of his persecution—and he won no redress.


    As a result of this analysis, the appellate panel majority found that the wrong legal standard had been applied in Ornelas-Chavez’s case, and it was sent back to an Immigration Judge for reconsideration.


    This is the third major federal appeals court decision to reverse an asylum denial to a gay applicant in recent weeks, with the 2nd Circuit in New York and the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati also doing so. These findings buttress the conclusion that the Bush administration’s immigration system, reassigned to the Department of Homeland Security created after 9/11, shows a hostility to gay asylum claims that had been in abeyance during the Clinton years.
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  10. #10
    Senior Member gofer's Avatar
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    There was a time, not long ago, that a homosexual wasn't allowed into the country, but thanks to Barney Frank, he got all that changed. Can't imagine why! I gather from the article this guy is a transvestite cross-dresser. I thought asylum was for political persecution, not for every weirdo gay who asks to be persecuted by parading around in women's clothes. The cesspool just gets deeper and deeper.

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