Violence Against Latina Immigrants: Citizenship, Inequality, and Community

3 Formal Barriers to Citizenship

41 l     l 3 Formal Barriers to Citizenship The all-inclusive spirit of the Violence Against Women Act and the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act is tainted by gender , sexual, racial, ethnic, and class discriminatory parameters that end up excluding many battered immigrants, regardless of their history of abuse. The cases of Claudia, Julia, Luisa, Laura, Martha,1 Rosa, Manuela, Ana, and Susana, in contrast to Angela’s, illustrate how VAWA and VTVPA work within long-standing formal legal structures that prioritize men over women, married over nonmarried, heterosexual over nonheterosexual , American over foreign, and working, middle, or upper class over poor. This chapter uncovers the intricacies beneath the selection of battered immigrants as subjects worthy to become U.S. citizens as the state hopes to sustain its sovereignty, nationhood, and productivity along a hierarchical, disciplinary social order through immigration laws. Gender and Sexual Discrimination Inconsistent with the origin and spirit of these laws, the gender violence –based immigration provisions in VAWA and VTVPA are permeated with gender and sexual discriminatory legacies. The marital status and sexual orientation of the abused determine the options available to them. Whereas married, heterosexual survivors of gender violence are fully protected, nonmarried, separated but not divorced, and nonheterosexual survivors are partially protected as long as they find more obstacles than opportunities along the way. This gradation was visible in the cases of all the immigrants who approached Organization for Refugees of America /Organización para Refugiados de América (and those who did not; in my two years of work at ORA, I never learned of a nonheterosexual immigrant survivor of a crime seeking services even if such an individual could have found relief through a U visa). Among those immigrants who sought 42 x Formal Barriers to Citizenship services, Angela, Claudia, Julia, and Luisa provide good illustrations of the embedded gender and sexual discrimination. While all of them were survivors of extreme physical, sexual, and psychological violence perpetrated by their respective abusers in the United States, their and their husbands ’ marital status led these battered immigrants to diverging routes to citizenship. Whereas Angela enjoyed full protection (as I presented in the previous chapter), Claudia, Julia, and Luisa had different luck. Claudia Claudia, originally from Mexico, had migrated to the United States in search of work opportunities to help her family survive extremely poor living conditions and health problems. The mother of seven children— three living in Mexico (one with brain paralysis), three in the United States, and one who had recently passed away—Claudia had come to her appointment at ORA with her youngest boy. While Maggie, the legal assistant in charge of the intake, explained to Claudia that the appointment consisted of a long questionnaire designed to determine if she would be eligible for some sort of legal remedy, I smiled at the young boy and showed him a couple of toys that Maggie kept in her office. Maggie began with the “easy questions”: name, address, nationality. Soon, however , she asked more compromising questions that interrupted the flow of the intake: “When was the last time that you entered the United States? Where? How?” Claudia looked puzzled, and Maggie told her that it did not matter if she did not have documents when she entered and stressed that all the information was confidential. Claudia smiled uncomfortably, paused, and nervously answered. Then, Maggie asked if she had had any contact with an immigration officer, and Claudia replied that she had not. Maggie reacted to this answer with an enthusiastic “Excellent!” because if a battered immigrant had had contact with immigration officers and charges were brought against her, the citizenship petition could be denied by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Maggie continued to follow the questions on the intake form, which led her to specifics about Claudia’s abuse: “Was the abuse physical, emotional , sexual? Are you married to the abuser? Have you lived together with the abuser? Do you have documentation to prove that you were living together? Is the abuser a citizen, a resident, or undocumented? Is the abuser divorced? How many times have you and the abuser been married before?” While Maggie jotted down the answers and nodded, Clau- Formal Barriers to Citizenship x 43 dia told us that she had been a victim of domestic violence since she was very young, and that one of her daughters had also been victimized when she was only...