By: Adwoa Tandoh
I recently got the chance to sit down with a domestic violence survivor who is an immigrant. (I’ve given her a pseudonym and am not naming her country of origin to protect her identity and safety.) The woman, who I’ll call Zainab gave up her job as a nurse, said goodbye to her family, and ignored her fear of heights to fly to the United States and be with her new husband. However, when she got to Maryland, her relationship with her husband changed.
First, he told her that she could not leave the house, that Americans would not want to see her and would not treat her well because of her ethnicity. Then to guarantee this he started locking her in the house. To limit her freedom, he refused to sponsor her for a green card. Then he took her passport and birth certificate away. There was physical abuse and as he was abusing her, he cheated on her and brought other women into their home, she said. She landed in the hospital twice with injuries. The second time a social worker reached out and helped her find a home, get a divorce, and get her citizenship.
Now, five years later, she is living in a group home and taking courses to regain her nursing certification. However, the thing she had wished for most when she arrived in this country and began suffering from domestic violence, was someone to tell her what her rights were and how to navigate the system in America. In her home country, her husband’s behavior would have been completely acceptable and she would have been at fault, which is not the case in this country. If she had the time, she would stand in the airport and hand out pamphlets to ensure what happened to her could not happen to another human being, she says.
Our focus on immigration seems to be on who we let in. Unless it makes headline news, like children being imprisoned in detention facilities, we do not focus on what happens once they are in the country. Immigrants are introduced to a brand-new foreign country where they may not speak the language and probably do not know the customs. Many of those immigrants come in and, with only a few hiccups, manage to navigate America relatively well. However, there are also people like this survivor who do not know anything about the customs of the country or the laws.
Immigrants deserve to know the rights available to them, so they can add some measure of safety to their new lives. For instance, foreign born domestic violence victims are eligible for U visas. A U visa gives the victim permission to live and work in the United States and may lead to the dismissal of any case in immigration court filed against the immigrant. Resources, such as the Multiethnic Domestic Violence Project (MEDOVI), help educate immigrants about this option and help them complete the application process. However, MEDOVI is only one organization that cannot help every immigrant and immigrants cannot receive help with the process if they do not know that the policy exists.
Policies that protect immigrant domestic violence survivors are moot if the people they are meant to protect are not aware of their existence. In order to obtain an immigrant visa there is a rigorous process that includes an application, an interview, and a medical examination. It cannot be that difficult to provide them knowledge of rights they are entitled to and the laws that protect them. Zainab believes that if she had received a pamphlet about the resources available to her then the situation, she was in would not have gotten so bad. The irony is that immigrants have rights, they just do not have the right to know about them.
*She has been given an alias for her protection
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