DATE=September 30, 2002
TYPE=Dateline
NUMBER=7-36772
TITLE=Women and Immigration
BYLINE=Ania Zalewski
TELEPHONE=619-1287
DATELINE=Washington
EDITOR=Neal Lavon
CONTENT=
DISK: DATELINE THEME [PLAYED IN STUDIO, FADED UNDER DATELINE HOST VOICE OR PROGRAMMING MATERIAL]
HOST: Since the early 1990s, there have been more female than male immigrants settling in the United States. Immigration experts say that poses unique challenges to both the American immigration system and to the women arriving on our shores. In this Dateline report, ______examines how an honored American tradition is being reshaped by the forces of the 21st century.
SOUND: SNEAK LADY LIBERTY, THREADS OF GLORY, A-111, SIDE 5, BAND 1, JOAN FOSTER, ESTAB, TAKE UNDER FOR, THEN LOSE GRADUALLY BY SECOND GRAPH:
TEXT: One of America's most deeply-held beliefs is the benefit of immigration. Almost everyone in the United States came here from somewhere else. Our national legends sanctify the immigrant family arriving on our shores, carrying only the clothes on their backs, and determined to make a success in the New World.
Such was the case in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But as we enter the 21st century, the face of immigration has changed. Rather than a nuclear family, the face of today's immigrant is mostly female.
While immigrants tend to share similar problems, scholars say female immigrants face concerns not dreamt of by settlers of earlier eras.
A recent conference organized by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Migration Policy Institute in Washington D.C., brought together analysts, policy-makers and activists who discussed the specific challenges facing today's female immigrants.
A growing proportion of women who immigrate to the United States, say these experts, arrive without their spouses and suffer what they call the triple burden of work. That means caring for their families in the U.S., and helping relatives in the countries of their origin. They also confront the tensions of being expected to keep the 'old' culture alive in the family, while introducing their children into unfamiliar schools. They must learn new social and health systems in an another language, and their lives will now be based on the values of their adopted home. Still, faced with war, persecution or poverty, the numbers of women seeking a new life in the United States are rising.
Although the rate of contemporary immigration relative to the total U. S. population is much lower than in the past, more than half of the 31 million foreign-born people in this country are women. Elizabeth Grieco, data manager at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., says this indicates that there are more women immigrants than men.
TAPE: CUT#1, GRIECO,:14
"There is probably 15.5 million female foreign born in the United States. And from the early 1990s you see that there are more females coming to reside in the United States than there are males."
TEXT:This trend is different from previous immigration patterns when most immigrants were men. What is also different is that two-thirds of today's immigrant women are from Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East with only a minority coming from traditional European nations. While many immigrant women arrive with few job skills for the modern market, Elizabeth Grieco [GREEK-koh] says more and more women, especially those coming from Asia, are very well-educated.
TAPE: CUT#2, GRIECO,:07
"Some immigrants, like from India, come over with advanced degrees, they enter the computer industries and they do quite well for themselves."
TEXT: Min Zhou [MINN ZHOW], a sociology professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, emphasized that since 1970s, the top five destinations where immigrants settled were the large and powerful states of California, New York, Florida, Texas and New Jersey. But now, she adds, immigrants are moving to new states like North Carolina and cities like Washington, D.C.
TAPE: CUT#3, ZHOU,:15
"But today there are lot of metropolitan areas, not only traditionally receiving areas some of the areas that traditionally did not received immigrants, they have become immigrants centers like the city of Washington, D.C. which has become a new immigrant center in a current year."
TEXT: Women who arrive in large American cities as immigrants are offered both opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, chances for employment are greater. But on the other, women run the risk of becoming a victim of crime; or face frustration in obtaining health care and housing. Like all new employees, but especially in the case of immigrants, these women could be exploited by unscrupulous employers. In instances where female immigrants have suffered abuse, Deborah Meyers, Policy Analyst at the Migration Policy Institute explains, they are afraid to seek help because of fears they could be deported.
TAPE: CUT#4, MEYERS,:12
"In many cases workers, because they're dependent on their jobs, because they need that source of income - might be reluctant to complain about the conditions because they're afraid to lose their job and rightfully so."
TEXT: Leslye Orloff, from the National Organization for Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund, emphasizes another problem for immigrant women - domestic violence. Ms. Orloff says domestic violence is exacerbated in marriages where a citizen is abusing a partner who is not a citizen. The legal status of the non-citizen, she warns, may depend upon his or her marriage to the abuser.
TAPE: CUT#5, ORLOFF,:15
"The citizens or residents of the spouse control when to file the immigration papers, whether to file the immigration papers, and whether an immigrant family member can keep the immigration status. So it's a huge power and control factor."
TEXT: When immigration law gives spouses control over the immigration status of their family members, advocates argue, it forces many battered female immigrants to become isolated in violent homes, afraid to turn to anyone for help. Leslye Orloff says these women fear continued abuse if they stay, but ar worried about deportation if they leave.
TAPE: CUT#6, ORLOFF,:27
"Many, many women come as dependent family members. And that dependence exacerbates the severity of abuse and undermines her (woman's) ability to leave or to do something about it. And it exacerbates her isolation as a victim from seeking help. Because she might be working in a place where she's very isolated in her work place and isolated in her community from people who could provide her with information."
TEXT: Battered immigrant women, says Ms. Orloff, remain isolated because of their fear of reprisals should they inform authorities. The only people they do tell about abuse, she notes, tend to be other immigrant women.
TAPE: CUT#7, ORLOFF,:18
"Over fifty percent (of women) that we've interviewed and researched, indicate that when they talk to somebody about the domestic violence - the highest percentage of people that they talk to is another immigrant women - girlfriends, mothers and sisters are the top three, after that they speak to virtually no one else."
TEXT: Ms. Orloff acknowledged that the Violence Against Women Acts of 1994 and 2000 contained provisions to remove immigration law as a tool to be used by abusers to trap immigrant women in abusive relationships. Another fear of young immigrant women is the threat of forced work in low-wage jobs or being coerced into prostitution. Marisa Demeo, of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, detailed one case involving female immigrants that three years ago which generated troubling headlines.
TAPE: CUT#8, DEMEO,:23
"In April of 1999, seven defendants were sentenced to jail in order to pay a million dollars in restitution for enslaving dozens of Mexican women and girls; some as young as fourteen in brothel houses in Florida and Carolinas through beatings and threats. The federal prosecutors and agents worked with the immigrant advocacy group to obtain shelter, clothing and jobs for the victims who now do have legal status."
TEXT: But recent advances in immigration and criminal legislation have worked to ease the problem by targeting lawbreakers and exploiters of women.
TAPE: CUT#9, DEMEO,:18
"In terms of the legislation that's helping to solve this problem - there already were some laws which made involuntary servitude criminal, however with the passage of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, there are broader protections for individuals who are the victims of those types of practices."
TEXT: The Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, assists refugees and asylum seekers fleeing political, religious, or gender-based prosecution. Sometimes such immigrants can be held indefinitely, and in many cases, are detained in maximum security facilities while waiting the outcome of their cases from govenrment agencies like the Immigration and Naturalization Services, the I-N-S. Wendy Young is a director of Government Relations and U.S. Programs for the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children.
TAPE: CUT#10, YOUNG,:27
"Detention in the United States overall has grown dramatically in the past few years so on any given day the I-N-S is detaining approximately 26,000 individuals - about 5 percent of whom are asylum seekers and about 7 percent of whom are women. These are people who are hold in very, very harsh conditions while in the I-N-S custody, In fact about 65 percent of the I-N-S' detainees are held in county prisons across the United States."
TEXT: As Wendy Young explains, those detainees must wear prison uniforms and are held as common criminals. Many come from countries involved in conflict and are already traumatized by the violence. The experience of languishing in U-S detention, she adds, worsens the trauma for these women.
TAPE: CUT#11, YOUNG,:33
"Basically if there is a country in the world that's having a political problem, there is probably somebody in detention of that nationality. We've seen Afghan women in detention, Kosovar women in detention, Somali women, Sudanese, Angolan; Basically when people flee armed conflict, very often some of them will arrive in the United States and be taken into detention. The problem is that because people have fled armed conflict, because they fled human rights abuses - typically they've traumatized already by both the experience in their home country and their displacement."
TEXT: But Wendy Young acknowledges that the United States has made great progress in terms of recognizing the unique circumstances that women immigrants can face. In 1995, the I-N-S issued Gender Guidelines to establish legal standards for claims raised by women. As Wendy Young notes, these new rules have helped in the evolution of asylum procedures.
TAPE: CUT#13, YOUNG,:22
"That's something that we give a lot of credit to I-N-S for. The United States was only the second country in the world to issue guidelines to its asylum adjudicators that define legal evidentiary and procedural standards for the handling of women's asylum claims. This was a real step forward because it opened the door to considerations of women claims on the basis of gender persecution."
TEXT: Not all asylum cases for female immigrants are clear-cut. A woman who won political asylum in the United States by claiming she would suffer genital mutilation if forced to return to her native Ghana, was indicted this month on charges of lying to U.S. authorities. Some immigration analysts worry there may be more such cases which could hamper reforms aimed at helping women immigrants. Nevertheless, for the vast majority of female immigrants, America offers what it has always offered immigrants in the pastfaith, hope, and opportunity. And that message continues to resonate around the world.
This edition of Dateline was written by Ania Zalewksi, I'm_____ in Washington.
MUSIC: SNEAK (:11) POOR BUT AMBITIOUS, THE BAMBOO ORCHESTRA WITH WILMOTH HOUDINI, 3:05, SONGS OF IMMIGRATION A-98, SIDE 2, CUT 6,