Violence against Immigrant and Migrant Women Essay ⋆ Criminal Justice Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Immigrant women migrate to the United States for a variety of reasons. Many come here voluntarily to better their lives, to reunite with their family members, to attend school or look for jobs. Others come involuntarily, as victims of human trafficking, fleeing persecution, sexual assault or domestic abuse, economic, social, or political upheavals in their home countries. Some immigrant women have obtained legal permission from immigration authorities to be in the United States and are “documented.” Others may have no immigration documents. Many undocumented immigrant women may qualify to receive legal immigration status but be unaware of their eligibility, particularly when they have been victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or trafficking and the information they do have has been controlled and provided by the perpetrator of the crimes against them. Immigrant women represent a broad cross-section of society. They are mothers, daughters, students, workers, caretakers, and professionals. They may have a great deal of formal education or they may not have any at all. Some speak English fluently, while others speak hesitantly, or only speak the language of their home country or community. Their experiences are rich and varied.

For many immigrant women, access to legal immigration status is intimately connected with their roles as wives and mothers. In general, men immigrate in search of better employment and educational opportunities, while women immigrate based on family ties. Sixty-nine percent of women attain lawful permanent residency through family relationships. Women are 38% more likely than men to attain legal permanent residency through family-based visas. Less than 4% of women enter the United States on employment visas.

Once women from other countries reach the United States, their families and communities expect these women to become protectors of culture and responsible for maintaining and passing on customs of their home country to children, oftentimes remaining obedient and subservient to male family members. By contrast, in the United States, expectations of acculturation encourage immigrant women to strive for independence and equality. Cultural clashes, the stress of immigration, a history of traumatic experiences, and the extent of access to resources in this country can have a significant effect on how an immigrant woman responds to family or sexual violence.

For many immigrant women, their legal immigration status is tied to a spouse, to other family members, or to a job. If any of these relationships turns abusive, the immigrant woman can become trapped in the abusive relationship—say, tied to an abusive spouse or a harassing employer—by the abuser’s control over her immigration status.

In 1994’s landmark Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), Congress recognized that violence against women affects immigrant women in unique ways and created a special procedure for victims to use in applying for legal immigration status that is not tied to the citizenship or immigration status of their abusive spouses or parents (VAWA self-petitioning). Today, over 30,000 immigrant women and their children have attained legal immigration status as VAWA self-petitioners. In 2000 VAWA expanded immigration protections to cover immigrant victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, trafficking, and many other crimes by creating the crime victim U-visa. This new legal immigration visa helps immigrant victims whose abusers were not their spouses, were undocumented immigrants, were strangers, or were employers. These are all victims for whom the VAWA self-petition was not an option. The U-visa allows victims of mostly violent and kidnapping-related crimes to petition for a visa if they participated in an investigation or prosecution of the perpetrator. This visa helps many immigrant women and children obtain protection from deportation and legal work authorization. It also helps law enforcement and the criminal justice system bring perpetrators to justice. All VAWA self-petition, U-visa, and trafficking victim visa cases are filed with and adjudicated by the specially trained VAWA Unit of the Vermont Service Center, Department of Homeland Security.

Migrant worker is defined in Article 2 of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families as “a person who is to be engaged, is engaged or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a State of which he or she is not a national.” The Convention points to specific categories of workers such as “frontier worker,” “seasonal worker,” “project-tied worker,” and “specified-employment worker.”

Women make up a large number of migrant workers, seasonal and farm workers, in the United States. Migrant women leave economically depressed countries in Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa for countries in Western Europe and the United States in order to find jobs and send money back to their families, sometimes not seeing family members for years at a time. In fact, many countries’ economies depend on the labor of women working abroad. Migrant women are extremely susceptible to exploitation. Migrant women are often extremely isolated by geography, repeated relocation, language, and culture. When migrant women work for the same companies as their husbands, employers pay the husband for the wife’s labor and the migrant farm worker wife has little access to money. Migrant women working in agricultural fields, food-processing plants, and other factories are particularly susceptible to sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape by employers and coworkers.

Many women in developing countries (source countries) who are looking for jobs in the United States and Western Europe (destination countries) are often approached by people promising high-paying employment opportunities. These people, their eventual traffickers, facilitate the women’s entries into destination countries, confiscate their papers, and force them to perform work for little or no wages. The work ranges from working on farms to working in sweatshops or performing commercial sex acts like prostitution or exotic dancing.

Many women do not speak out or seek help because they fear retribution or loss of their jobs, thus cutting off the flow of money back home. Similarly, since many migrant women are undocumented, they fear that speaking out will attract law enforcement attention that could turn into reporting to immigration authorities and deportation.

Bibliography:

International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. (1990). Retrieved from http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CMW.aspx
Orloff, L. E. (2001). Lifesaving welfare safety net access for battered immigrant women and their children: Accomplishments and next steps. William and Mary Journal on Women and the Law, 3, 597–658.
Orloff, L. E., & Kaguyutan, J. E. (2002). Offering a helping hand. American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy, & the Law, 8(2), 231–282.
Orloff, L. E., & Sullivan, K. (Eds.). (2004). Breaking barriers: A complete guide to legal rights and resources for battered immigrants. Available at http://library.niwap.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/pdf/FAM-Manual-Full-BreakingBarriers07.13.pdf
Tamayo, W. R. (2007, November). Sexual harassment and assault in the workplace: A basic guide for attorneys in obtaining relief for victims under federal employment law. Presentation delivered to the Legal Momentum Immigrant Women Program Conference, Washington, DC.

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