April 14, 2005

Female Genital Mutilation: Ninth Circuit Opens The Refugee Floodgates

By Marcus Epstein

[Recently by Marcus Epstein Immigration At CPAC: Grass Roots Restive, But Not Yet Revolting]

On March 2, the notoriously liberal 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Mohammed v. Gonzales [PDF] that women from countries that allow female circumcision are eligible for asylum in the United States.

This ruling has many significant ramifications for American immigration policy. The first is the sheer number of people who could become potential asylum seekers in this country.

Since 1996 the US government has recognized female genital mutilation as a form of gender persecution. However, asylum was only granted to girls and women who proved that there was reason to believe they could not avoid the practice in their homeland.

What Mohammed vs. Gonzales establishes is that women who live in a society where female circumcision is permitted are subjected to "permanent and continuing harm." Therefore, their gender has become a "persecuted social group."

All of them, even those already subjected to genital mutilation, can now seek refuge in the United States under this new classification.

According to Amnesty International, more than 100 million women have been subjected to female genital mutilation. Within the same societies, there are millions more who have not yet endured the practice.

All of them are now eligible for asylum.

Even the supporters of Mohammed admit that allowing this many asylum seekers (not to mention their family members) is completely unrealistic.

Stephen Knight, the coordinating attorney at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, told the LA Times that the decisions would not "open the floodgates" because few women in such countries "have the wherewithal to get to the U.S." [Court Eases Asylum Rule for Genital Mutilation. By Henry Weinstein. March 11, 2005.]

His statements are contradictory as he admits that the decision opens the floodgates by permitting literally hundreds of millions of women to immigrate to the United States, but denies that the open floodgates will allow much water to flow through.

This is not to say that this will not change in the future, and I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if Mr. Knight [Send him mail] and his ilk demand that the U.S. taxpayers provide those women with "the wherewithal to get to the U.S."

It is hard not to sympathize with women who undergo this horrific procedure, [To read a description of it, click here.] but it is important to recognize that accepting thousands, if not millions of African immigrants into this country is not the answer.

Just days before the decision was reached, the Atlanta Journal Constitution published a story called "Ancient Rite Or A Wrong" about how "Genital cutting of girls becomes an issue in Georgia, nationwide."  

This problem is not because the descendants of Juliette Gordon Low have suddenly discovered a new hobby, but because this country has imported the most medieval and disgusting customs of the Third World into the country via their immigrants.

Despite growing international opposition, immigrants are bringing the entrenched custom to Europe, Australia, Canada and the United States.

In this country alone, an estimated 168,000 girls and women have undergone the procedure or are still at risk, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number is growing as the number of immigrants from practicing countries grows.

These immigrants are not adapting Western ideas about women; rather they are bringing their misogynistic views to America.

Laila Mohamed, a former caseworker for Refugee Family Services in Clarkson told the AJC, "In [African immigrant communities] most of the women still are believing in this tradition."

With political correctness, it becomes more and more difficult to stop horrific practices that are cultural norms among immigrants.

For example, in Germany and Britain there has been a large problem with Honor Killings—where Muslim girls are murdered by their families for "dishonoring" them for actions like pre-marital sex, not agreeing to an arranged marriage or rejecting genital mutilation.

Both these countries have had trouble investigating these crimes because the Muslim communities where they occur often cover them up and because the political and media leaders are afraid of being called racist for criticizing Muslim tradition.

According to Serap Cileli, a Turkish-German woman who helps Muslim women to escape their oppressive families, "People were afraid they would be called Nazis if they dared to bring up issues of human rights in the Turkish community." [The Death of a Muslim Woman | "The Whore Lived Like a German", By Jody K. Bieh, Der Spiegel, March 2, 2005]

Allowing hordes of immigrants from countries that allow genital mutilation or other unsavory cultural practices into this country will do nothing to stop the problem, it only brings the problem to America.