Abused Migrant Women in the United States: Progress, Challenges and Recommendations

Gabriela Wasileski is assistant professor of criminology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Mark J. Miller is Emma Smith Morris Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware.

Migration has always constituted an important part of history. Human mobility across national borders has forged the contemporary age of migration—an era demarcated by the growing saliency of migration in domestic, bilateral and regional relations. Migration policies have been created and implemented across the globe in an effort to control international migration, to set rules about who can migrate under what conditions, and to establish the rights and obligations immigrants have in their new homelands.

Immigrants are more than simply a homogenous community with similar problems and concerns. Even though female immigrants have become increasingly prominent in international migration, social science research has not adequately addressed the role of women in migration, especially those who are undocumented immigrants. The consequences of international migration for women become increasingly complex when their experiences of interpersonal violence correlate with undocumented migration status.

This essay provides an overview of human trafficking and the special problem of undocumented battered women. Second, it discusses the evolution of United States policy and its strengths and shortcomings. A final section offers recommendations for further policy reforms. By examining the unique needs of undocumented immigrant battered women within a migration policy framework, this essay attempts to place immigrant battered women at the centre of a social discourse.

The Vulnerability of Female Migrants

In broad terms, there is a growing public awareness that immigrant women are like any other victims of crime that need assistance, protection, and access to justice. Yet, the prevailing political discourse across the United States sees undocumented immigrants as a problem requiring a restrictive response. At the policy level, a variety of legal measures has been formulated to regulate who can migrate and under what conditions, and to specify what rights immigrants possess in their new homeland. Evolving perceptions that see undocumented immigrants as a problem for national security and the economy have triggered the creation of migration policies which profoundly influence the treatment of undocumented immigrant battered women.

Enslaving people and transporting them across borders dates back to antiquity. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, even after the British-led anti-slavery campaign, concerns persisted about the abuse of migrants, and particularly about female and child migrants. These concerns gave rise to international agreements to prevent and penalise such abuses. The United Nations then inherited this legacy and has produced an array of instruments aimed at facilitating international efforts to curb abuses of migrants. Such endeavours at the global level have been echoed in regional forums and at the level of individual states.

These efforts intensified in the post–Cold War era when human trafficking emerged as an important security-policy concern. Human trafficking, which is not necessarily international in nature, came to be viewed as a significant, indeed growing, component of illegal migration. What demarcates trafficking from illegal migration in general is the harm done to migrants. While it is generally up to courts or legal processes to determine whether a specific case constitutes an instance of human trafficking, broadly speaking, human trafficking involves international migration that results in the purposive exploitation of migrants.

In response to pressure to address the humanitarian protection of those who are victims of crime, the United States provides legal remedies for adjusting the migration status of undocumented battered immigrant women to legal status. However, the process for such adjustment is not a politically neutral practice. It is regulated under migration policy statutes, as opposed to social policies. Because the motives underlying migration policies are to control immigrants, the needs of undocumented immigrant battered women might not be adequately addressed.¹ While social policies are created to help those in need, undocumented immigrant battered women must comply with migration policies before they can receive social assistance. Consequently, immigrant battered women are often viewed first as aliens and only second as a victims of violence, and as such they can be subjected to legal penalties, such as arrest and/or deportation for violation of migration law.²

Legal Responses

In the United States, responding to male violence against women has been an important part of national policy for the last three decades. Examples of the importance accorded to the issue include the Violence against Women Act, the development of community-based services for victims, changes in professional responses to victims, and the creation of a variety of social-service programmes for the victims of interpersonal violence. These changes were embedded in broader policy and service arenas and extended into programmes that addressed the issue of interpersonal violence in immigrant communities.

While interpersonal violence has not developed as an exclusively immigrant issue in the United States, the larger framework for domestic violence has improved access to help for undocumented immigrant battered women. The United States enacted comprehensive public policy and financial resources to promote anti-trafficking efforts and to tackle the problem of violence against women.³ In particular, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 created two new non-immigrant visa categories giving legal status to victims of certain crimes: the “T” visa provides legal status for up to five thousand victims of trafficking and the “U” visa provides legal status for up to ten thousand victims of interpersonal violence, rape, trafficking, involuntary servitude, sexual assault, torture, and other offences. Both of the new visas provide temporary (non-immigrant) status and work authorisation to the victims and certain members of their families, and opportunities to obtain permanent residency status (green cards) after some period of time and under strictly defined conditions.⁴

Even though the United States experiences tensions about undocumented immigrants, especially in the current time of economic crisis, undocumented immigrant battered women have gained access to some service providers without recognition of their migration status. In the United States, providing social services is under the purview of community and non-government organisations, not just government entities. For example, while shelters for battered women may use government grants, they are also financially independent organisations that receive private funding. These