REAL ID: A new US law could send immigrant torture victims back...

[Gormy Cuss]

This is a long article but worth the read.

REAL ID has a mechanism to allow the government to reverse asylum status.
From the East Bay Express (Oakland/Berkeley CA)

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/Issues/current/news/feature_6.html

Opening Old Wounds
A new US law could send immigrant torture victims back to their tormentors.

(snip)
To gain asylum, immigration law used to require torture survivors to show that they were persecuted for at least one of five reasons: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. In fact many, including Singh, often were not told why they were tortured. Over time, case law evolved so that if asylum seekers could not prove why they were persecuted, it was essentially assumed that it was because of their political opinion. The key case was a 1995 Ninth Circuit decision involving another tortured Sikh named Singh.

Real ID was designed to overturn that case, and it now requires asylum seekers to prove why they were tortured. The problem is that torture victims seldom possess physical evidence from their ordeals. Due to the often-hurried nature of their flight, survivors usually bring little more than their clothes and a few personal belongings with them to the United States. More importantly, there are rarely records of their arrests in the country they fled, let alone documents to prove they were tortured. "Short of having an affidavit from the man who tortured you, it's a pretty difficult standard," said Scott Mossman, an Oakland immigration-rights lawyer. While the new law allows judges to waive this corroborating-evidence requirement, it limits appeals if they choose not to.
(snip)
But the most troubling aspect of Real ID for the hundreds of thousands of people who already have received asylum is its retroactivity. Real ID lets the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice reopen asylum cases and begin deportation proceedings. The mechanism permitting this is buried in a little-noticed section that expands the definition of terrorism and terrorist-related activities to include -- among other things -- speech. For example, an asylum seeker is deportable if he or she was a member of a "political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity" even if neither the person nor the group ever engaged in terrorism or poses a threat to America.

[mawatkin]

1. Asylum

I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!

maybe now if they apply for asylum they will really need it. Now as it stands you have people appling for asylum and then retyrning to the same country for vacation, go figure. How can you be afraid and then go back for vacation!

No wonder this was put in, Now all we need to do is overturn the Cuban Adjustment Act!!!!!!!!!! That's another fluk by our government.