Battered Women, Si; America-Haters, No.

America’s New Immigration Policies Regarding Battered Women

Fellow Americans: Prepare to receive the entire female population of Pakistan sometime soon. And that’s just for starters. I don’t oppose this—but I honestly don’t know if we can economically afford to do it. Given the recession/depression, I rather doubt we can. But get ready for something like this to happen anyway.

Today, the Obama administration reversed a Bush-era policy and opened the way for “foreign women who are victims of severe domestic beatings and sexual abuse to receive asylum in the United States.” The battered women will have to meet “strict conditions for asylum” and will also have to show that “domestic abuse is widely tolerated in their country…that they could not find protection from institutions at home or by moving to another place within their own country.”

Studies show that 50-90% of Pakistani women are routinely beaten, even when they are pregnant, and that daughter-beating and wife-beating are not considered crimes. Pakistani men will sometimes publicly gang-rape a young girl in order to falsely “avenge” another crime committed by a member of their own clan; be-head, throw acid at, or burn alive a girl or woman who has offended their family or political-religious honor; they will marry a ten-year-old daughter to a fifty-year-old man in order to settle a debt, or to receive a small sum of money. In Pakistan, most honor killings of girls and women are not prosecuted either. In one study, my own, first published in Middle East Quarterly, almost half the honor murders perpetrated in the West were perpetrated by Pakistani men or Pakistani families.

I know, I know: Male domestic violence is a global phenomenon. Why single out one country—isn’t that “racist” or “Islamophobic” and doesn’t that suggest that all Pakistani Muslims are batterers or tend to batter women more than, let’s say, Christian-American men do?

But they do. They are trained to do so. Their culture has normalized woman-battering while the Big Bad West has actually gone and criminalized it, tried to shelter its victims and prosecute their persecutors. True, we have done so rather late in the day and in an imperfect way. But this level of progress does not exist in the Arab Middle East, Africa, or central Asia where even honor murders are accepted, rarely reported as such, even more rarely prosecuted, and where reduced sentences apply to this but to no other crime.

I am in favor of granting political asylum to battered women–and to all those dissidents, whether they have been battered by famlies or by the state, who believe in human rights and freedom, which beliefs have gotten them into great trouble.

AN APOLOGY
A friend, who wished to remain anonymous believes that Obama wishes to resettle Palestinians from Gaza and from Iraq in the United States. I published the sample letter that he wrote protesting this. Now, Judy K. Warner of the Refugee Resettlement Watch has posted a comment which challenges the idea that the Obama Administration is doing this. Warner says they are definitely not doing so. Please read her comments posted at the Comments section and check out her website.

The truth: Obama is settling the Palestinians from Iraq here in southern California but not the Palestinians from Gaza. Now, if anyone else out there has new and additional information about this, please contact me.

Obviously, if we are going to allow people into our country, I suggest we do not bring people who are filled with hate for America and the West. Ideally, we should offer asylum to those who share our views about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness-Western-style.

And by the way folks: A battered woman can also be an America-hater–and she can believe that she deserves to be beaten. Studies show that as well. Ponder it all. Have a magnificent weekend anyway.