Guatemalan Woman Granted Domestic Violence Asylum

(Providence, Rhode Island) On January 23, a Guatemalan woman, Maira Farfan Maldonado, was granted asylum in the U.S. by Immigration Judge Francis L. Cramer for being a battered woman. Reportedly, Maldonado left Guatemala to escape from her violent husband and she fears that she will be in peril if she returns.

Granting asylum based on domestic violence is considered an unsettled area of the law, meaning that the result could go either way based on the judge. According to law professor Karen Musalo:

“It’s all over the place, and part of the reason the decisions are all over the place is that some judges think there isn’t clear precedent telling them to go one way or the other. Some judges are denying [the claims], and some are granting them on very similar facts.”

Some critics fear that battered woman asylum could cause of flood of applicants from all over the world.

I can understand a certain level of hesitation regarding expansion of the candidate field for asylum seekers primarily because it seems to rely on a catchall of ill-defined human rights violations. The U.S. likely couldn't reasonably handle giving asylum to every person on Earth whose "human rights" were violated. Ominously, the domestic violence asylum category is a step in that direction.

[Update] Interestingly, Maldonado was in the U.S. for a number of years before asking for asylum. In fact, it appears that she was either selected or recruited to be a case for furthering a political agenda or she had an epiphany and realized, all of a sudden, that she could request asylum.

From 2000 to 2008, Maldonado was content being an illegal alien in Rhode Island working as a janitor. Last July, however, she was arrested along with 30 others in a crackdown on illegals working at Rhode Island courthouses. The arrest somehow triggered the asylum request.

With asylum granted, Maldonado now says she plans to learn English.