Violence Against Women Act ("VAWA") Self-Petition Option

Battered spouse who filed a Violence Against Women Act (“VAWA”) motion to reopen gets a second chance to stay in the United States!

Over this past weekend, we received a good decision from the Board of Immigration Appeals on behalf of one of our clients. Our client, a woman, is married to a U.S. citizen, and she was pursuing adjustment of status based upon her marriage. However, the couple was unsuccessful at their visa interview, and the immigration service denied the citizen spouse’s petition. This denial triggered removal proceedings against our client. In Immigration Court, the judge refused to give our client additional time to prepare and file a new visa petition with her husband. We appealed the judge’s decision, but the Board dismissed the appeal.

After her appeal was dismissed, our client told us, for the first time, that she was a victim of abuse at the hands of her husband. She had evidence. She never told anyone about this before, including her immigration attorneys, because she was too ashamed to admit it. She was unaware of the fact that as an abused or a battered spouse of a U.S. citizen, under the Violence Against Women Act, she could self-petition with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service ("USCIS"). Once we learned of the abuses she suffered, we immediately helped her with her petition in January of 2009, and it is currently pending adjudication. The USCIS did find her prima facie eligible for the self-petition as a battered spouse. We filed a detailed and thorough motion to reopen with the Board, and asked the Board to consider this new evidence in our client’s favor.

Over the weekend, we received a decision by the Board, in which the Board granted our motion and reopened our client’s case! According to the Board, we successfully demonstrated that our client deserved a second chance to stay in the United States. While the self-petition has not yet been fully adjudicated, now that her case has been reopened by the Board, our client no longer faces immediate deportation, and will at least get a chance to stay in the United States until there is a decision on her self-petition and a new decision by the Immigration Judge. If she gets a favorable decision on her self-petition, then she will be able to pursue adjustment of status.

There is a lesson to be learned in this story. As immigration lawyers, we do not routinely ask our clients whether they are victims of abuse by their spouse, especially when the client is pursuing adjustment of status through his or her U.S. citizen spouse. Until the time she confessed to us that she was being abused by her husband, our client, like many other abuses spouses out there, had no idea that she had another option. Many women (and men) remain in unhealthy or abusive relationships, thinking that marriage to the U.S. citizen spouse is the only way to obtain permanent residency. Often, victims are too ashamed to admit the abuse to an Immigration Judge, to a DHS lawyer, or even to the victim’s own attorney. Indeed, had our client not come forward with the valuable information about her abuse, we would not have been able to offer her another option, and it is very possible that she would have been deported by now.

-Irwin Berowitz