Overview

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) allows battered immigrants to petition for legal status in the United States without relying on abusive U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident spouses, parents or children to sponsor their Adjustment of Status (Form I-485) applications. The law was enacted in 1994 and amended several times (1996, 2000, 2006 and 2013).

For many immigrant victims, the U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident family members may threaten to withhold their sponsorship as a tool of abuse. The purpose of the VAWA program is to allow victims the opportunity to "self-petition" or seek legal immigration status without sponsors.

The irony is that when it comes to the perception of domestic abuse, the focus is almost exclusively on men as the perpetrators of violence and abuse. The statistical reality is that more men than women are victims of intimate partner physical violence and psychological aggression. According to a 2010 national survey by the Centers for Disease Control and U.S. Department of Justice, in 2012, more men than women were victims of intimate partner physical violence and over 40% of severe physical violence was directed at men. Men were also more often the victim of psychological aggression and control over sexual or reproductive health. Erin Pizzey, the female British human rights activist who is credited with starting the first domestic abuse shelter stated that

There are as many violent women as men, but there's a lot of money in hating men, particularly in the United States -- millions of dollars. It isn't a politically good idea to threaten the huge budgets for women's refuges by saying that some of the women who go into them aren't total victims.

When it comes to immigration and domestic abuse, it conjures up images of Juancho beating Maria after drinking too much tequila or aguardiente after carousing all night with his friends returning home at dawn smelling of perfume.

What does it look like when the shoe is on the other foot? Dr. Tara Palmatier in her 2009 blog article, “Is She a Crazy Bitch -  A Quiz”, outlines a series of considerations regarding women as domestic abusers:

1. Does she fly into rages without warning over relatively trivial matters like a web page loading too slowly?
2. Are you always the scapegoat/bad guy whenever she’s frustrated, disappointed or just plain bored?
3. Do her friends (that is, if she has any) describe her as a “drama queen?”

4. Does she describe herself as a drama queen? If so, congrats. You found one with a modicum of self-awareness.

5. Is her lipstick a little too red? Is it applied like theater makeup and a tad crooked?

6. Did sex begin with an earth shattering bang and fizzle into infrequent, transactional and conditional sex?
7. Is she a black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinker?

8. Do you lie to your family, friends and colleagues about what goes on at home?

9. Do you find yourself making excuses to your family, friends and colleagues for her inexcusable behavior?
10.  Do you find yourself walking on eggshells around her?

11. Does she hate your friends and family and become angry or tearful when you spend time with them?

12. Is she pathologically jealous?

13. Does she project her feelings onto you? For example, she’s yelling and raging and then accuses you of being angry.

14. Does focus solely on her emotional experience while exhibiting little or no empathy for yours

15. Have you distanced yourself from friends and family because of your relationship?

16. Does she place you on a pedestal one day only to tear you down the next day? “I’ve never known anyone like you before. You’re so wonderful!” Next day: “You’re the devil! You’re the most selfish bastard I’ve ever met! You don’t love me!”

17. Did she change her identity after she landed you? For example, when you first met her she was a sexy, adventurous, sweet ballbuster; now, she’s afraid of her own shadow, has no outside interests and goes ballistic if she has to do anything without you.

18. Does she put you into “no win” situations in which nothing you do is good enough and you’re guaranteed to fail?

19. Does she exhibit stalker behaviors? This usually occurs during the courtship phase or when she senses you’re about to make a break for it. For instance: Calling and hanging up? Calling over and over and over until you answer the phone? Does she wait outside your home, uninvited, until you arrive? Does she show up at places she know you’ll be, also uninvited? Has she tried to get close to your friends in inappropriate ways?

If you answered “yes” to more than two of these questions, you may be involved with a female abuser. You’re not alone. They’re everywhere.

If any man or woman reading this article is honest about this series of questions, they will begin to see the situation of domestic abuse as something that is not exclusively the domain of woman and children. This article makes the case that many immigrant men who have failed to see themselves as domestic abuse victims, or have hidden the truth about their domestic abuse may qualify for immigration benefits under the Violence Against Women’s Act, the same law designed to protect women from their abusers.

Self-Petitioning Under VAWA

The self-petition is filed on Form I360 with a specially designated USCIS VAWA unit in the Vermont Service Center. If the self-petition is approvable, USCIS sends the self-petitioner a Notice of Prima Facie eligibility within a few months of the petition. The self-petitioner as a “qualified alien” can receive government aide. Upon approval, the self-petitioner receives notice of Deferred Action allowing the petioner to apply for worth authorization. The self-petioner may adjust status generally immediately as a spouse of a U.S. citizen or after several years as the spouse of a permanent relative. The self-petioner will have Deferred Action status until an immigrant visa (Green Card) becomes available.

1. Who Can Self-Petition

VAWA allows certain abused spouses, children and parents to self-petition for permanent residency in the United States. The eligible persons include: (1) the abused spouses of U.S. citizens including their derivative children; (2) the abused spouses of permanent residents and their derivative children; (3) abused children of U.S. citizens and permanent residents; (4) abused parents of U.S. sons and daughters. (5) Non-abused spouses of U.S. citizens or permanent residents when their child is abused by the U.S. citizen or permanent resident. The self-petitioner must be of good moral character.

2. Requirements for VAWA Self-Petitioning Spouses

The abuser must be a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident. The self-petitioner must be or was married to a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. The marriage that forms the basis of the self-petition must have been a “good faith” marriage. The abusive spouse must have subjected the self-petitioner to “battery” or “extreme cruelty” during the marriage. The self-petitioner must have lived with the abuser and the self-petitioner must be residing in the United States or if living abroad, must have been subjected to the abuse in the United States or the employee of the Armed Forces or U.S. government if the abuse occurred outside of the United States.

3. Marriage Issues

If the marriage was terminated and a connection between the divorce and domestic violence can be shown, the self-petition may be filed within two years of the termination of the marriage. If the marriage is terminated for any reason after the self-petition is filed, the termination will not affect the self-petition. If the abusive spouse is a U.S. citizen and dies, the self-petition can be filed within two years of the abusive spouse’s death. The rule does not extend to permanent residents.

If the marriage was not valid because of a prior or concurrent marriage of the abuser was legally terminated, but the self-petitioner believed the marriage was valid and can demonstrate that a marriage ceremony was performed, a self-petition may be filed for the “intended” marriage. If the self-petioner remarries after the approval of the self-petition, the self-petition will not be revoked.

4. Abuse Issues

Battery includes but is not limited to an act of violence resulting in injury. VAWA does not require the violence to be “heightened” or result in injury although violence resulting in physical injury qualifies per se as battery.

VAWA distinguishes “extreme cruelty” as domestic violence other than physical assault. Abusive acts that may not initially appear violent but are part of an overall pattern of violence are part of the definition. As a result, a person who has suffered no physical abuse may be eligible to self-petition; however, the abuse must rise to a certain level of severity in order to constitute extreme cruelty. Non-physical actions rise to a level of domestic violence when “tactics of control are intertwined with the threat of harm in order to maintain the perpetrator’s dominance through fear.

Hence, no exhaustive list exists but may include social isolation of the victim’ accusations of infidelity, incessant calling, writing or contacting, interrogation of friends and family members, threats, economic abuse, control of family finances, and degradation of the victim.

5. Identifying the Domestic Abuse Against Men

Dr. Tara Palmatier in her article “Ten Signs that your Girlfriend or Wife is an Emotional Bully” lists ten factors that highlight emotional bullying that from an immigration standpoint are likely to qualify as “extreme cruelty”:

1. Bullying - If she doesn’t get her way, there’s hell to pay. She wants to control the victim and resorts to emotional intimidation to do it. She uses verbal assaults and threats in order to get you to do what she wants. It makes her feel powerful to make the victim feel bad.

2. Unreasonable expectations - No matter how hard the victim tries and how much the victim gives, it’s never enough. She expects the victim to drop whatever they’re doing and attend to her needs. No matter the inconvenience, she comes first. She has an endless list of demands that no one mere mortal could ever fulfill. The Result: The victim is constantly criticized because he is not able to meet her needs and experience a sense of learned helplessness.

3. Verbal attacks. Verbal assault is another form of bullying, and bullies only act like this in front of those whom they don’t fear or people who let them get away with their bad behavior. The Result: The victim’s self-confidence and sense of self-worth all but disappear. The victim may even begin to believe the horrible things she says to the victim.
4. Gaslighting. “The perpetrator suffers a convenient loss of memory over the attacks.” If the woman the victim is involved with is prone to Borderline or Narcissistic rage episodes, in which she spirals into outer orbit, she may very well not remember things she’s said and done.
5. Unpredictable responses. - Telling the victim one day that something’s alright and the next day that he’s not is emotionally abusive behavior. It’s like walking through a landmine in which the mines shift location. The result is that the victim is constantly on edge, walking on eggshells, and waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is a trauma response.
6. Constant Chaos. She’s addicted to conflict. She gets a charge from the adrenaline and drama. She may deliberately start arguments and conflict as a way to avoid intimacy. She may also pick fights to keep the victim engaged or as a way to get the victim to react to her with hostility, so that she can accuse you of being abusive and she can play the victim.
7. Emotional Blackmail. She threatens to abandon the victim, to end the relationship, or give the victim the cold shoulder if the victim doesn’t play by her rules. She plays on the victim’s fears, vulnerabilities, weaknesses, shame, values, sympathy, compassion, and other “buttons” to control the victim and get what she wants.
8. Rejection - She ignores the victim, won’t look at the victim when they are in the same room, gives the victim the cold shoulder, withholds affection, withholds sex, declines or puts down your ideas, invitations, suggestions, and pushes you away when you try to be close. After she pushes the victim as hard and as far away as she can, she’ll try to be affectionate with the victim. The victim may still be hurting from her previous rebuff or attack and don’t respond. Then she accuses the victim of being cold and rejecting, which she’ll use as an excuse to push you away again in the future.
9. Withholding affection and sex. This is another form of rejection and emotional blackmail. It’s not just about sex, it’s about withholding physical, psychological, and emotional nurturing.
10. Isolating. She demands or acts in ways that cause the victim to distance himself from his family, friends, or anyone that would be concerned for the victim’s well-being or a source of support.

In regard to battery, it does not matter that the woman weighs 110 pounds. Punches and scratches are physical abuse no differently than “Bubba” who weighs 300 pounds slapping his girlfriend on Friday night after Happy Hour.

Summary

The issue of domestic abuse is a serious matter regardless of whether the victim is a man or woman. VAWA makes no distinction between domestic violence committed by a man or woman. The dirty secret apparently is that women are just as abusive as men. They do not necessarily beat the hell out a man physically but instead inflict their abuse through psychological and emotional aggression and manipulation, i.e. “death by a thousand cuts”.

It is enormous error and injustice for police departments investigating a call to automatically assume that the woman is always the victim. To quote Erin Pizzey, the renowned human rights activist, and a woman:

Men are gentle, honest, and straight-forward. Women are convoluted, deceptive and dangerous.

As a man looking in the mirror at myself, I am not necessarily inclined to agree wholeheartedly with either side of that equation but instead come to my own conclusion that women are as equally flawed as men. In many cases, the only difference is the difference in flaws. Heretofore, immigrant men married to U.S. citizens and permanent residents have been unaware of the availability of immigration benefits as a result of their spouse’s battery or extreme cruelty. Unfortunately, the “machismo” of the immigrant’s culture does not allow them to see or admit the naked truth.

The definition of extreme cruelty encompasses a wide range of abuse from psychological aggression to emotional control through the refusal to support a Green Card petition for the immigrant spouse where the immigrant spouse otherwise qualifies, in order to manipulate and control the immigrant spouse.

The immigrant’s self-assessment based on the types of questions and emotional and psychological abuse outlined above would seem to suggest that a reasonable number of immigrant men who otherwise view themselves in a hopeless and dead-end situation married to Cruella Deville, might qualify for U.S. residency and ultimately citizenship while escaping from their own personal Hell.