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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body bgcolor=white lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>This story is about a woman who is deaf, not blind, but it is one that should touch us all. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Long, but worth reading.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>We have a long way to go, many battles yet to win, but his can serve as a reminder that we have much for which to be grateful as well.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Peace,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Deborah<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>Subject:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> Deaf Mexican immigrants are declaring asylum in the U.S.and winning {"credible fear of persecution"}<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><div id=ygrp-mlmsg><div id=ygrp-msg><div id=ygrp-text><p style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><br>Deaf Mexican immigrants are declaring asylum in the U.S.—and winning<br>{"credible fear of persecution"}<br><br>http://fusion.net/story/205119/deaf-mexican-immigrants-declaring-asylum-us/<br><br>Casey Tolan | September 28, 2015 4:53 p.m.<br><br>When Rosa Aranda was 15 years old, a teacher wrote her name on a <br>chalkboard: R-O-S-A. “These letters,” the teacher told her, “this is <br>your name.”<br><br>At first, Aranda was confused. Growing up deaf in a small Mexican town <br>where there was no education system for kids like her, she had never <br>learned how to read, write, or do sign language. Unable to communicate, <br>Aranda had been beaten and mistreated by her family while her siblings <br>went to school.<br><br>“No one had ever told me what my name was,” Aranda said through a sign <br>language interpreter. “I was 15, and it was my first time reading my name.”<br><br>Now, Aranda, 58, is an undocumented immigrant living in San Diego. She’s <br>one of hundreds of deaf immigrants from Mexico and other countries who <br>have applied for asylum in the U.S. in the past few years. They argue <br>that the treatment they received in their home countries—which also <br>include Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Colombia—amounts to <br>persecution, and that deaf people living there today are still being <br>discriminated against.<br><br>It’s a novel reasoning, legal experts say, but it appears to be working. <br>Of the 250 deaf immigrants that California attorney Hadley Bajramovic <br>has helped apply for asylum since 2010, four have won their case and <br>none have been rejected. A fifth is pending final approval. (Cases <br>generally stretch on for five years or even longer.) Since they’ve <br>started winning, attorneys from around the country have been calling <br>Bajramovic asking for help with their own deaf clients.<br><br>Applying for asylum isn’t the same as becoming a refugee—people who <br>declare asylum are already in the U.S., either illegally or on a <br>temporary visa. If they’re approved, they’re on the path to a green card <br>and permanent residency. In order to be approved for asylum, they have <br>to prove to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that they have a <br>credible fear of persecution in their home country because of their <br>race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or a membership in a <br>particular social group.<br><br>The deaf immigrants fall into that last category. Stephen Yale-Loehr, a <br>Cornell law school professor who studies asylum and isn’t associated <br>with these cases, said applying for asylum because of deafness was a <br>unique and “creative interpretation” of the law.<br><br>But just being deaf isn’t enough to get asylum. Applicants have to show <br>proof that they would be persecuted if the U.S. government deports them <br>back to Mexico. Lots of corroborating evidence and grueling interviews <br>are required. Historically, people applying for asylum have a less than <br>50% win rate, Yale-Loehr said, so the success of the deaf immigrants so <br>far is striking.<br><br>“It’s sort of like granting asylum to gay and lesbians and other <br>persecuted minorities,” Yale-Loehr said. “The mere fact that these <br>people have gone through the asylum gauntlet successfully means that <br>they were able to prove that they have a real fear of persecution.”<br><br>Aranda, whose case is still pending, has lived in the U.S. for almost <br>two decades and raised her family here. She now signs in a mix of <br>American and Mexican sign language, but the fact that she only started <br>learning any language at age 15 has made it hard for her to become <br>fluent in either. In a video interview, she signed to her son Ian <br>Guzman, who is also deaf and translated into American sign language. <br>Kathy Veylit, another interpreter, translated into spoken English for <br>me. It’s a slow, complicated process, with a lot of back-and-forth, <br>checking, and verifying.<br><br>{Sidebar} Rosa Aranda, her son Ian Guzman, and her grandson do a video <br>interview with me and sign language interpreter Kathy Veylit.<br><br>But Aranda said she wanted to tell her life story because it might get <br>more attention on the treatment of deaf people in Mexico. “What I went <br>through—not having language, not being able to communicate—other people <br>are going through that now,” she said.<br><br>‘I felt like I was trapped’<br><br>Aranda was born in Tehuixtla, a tiny town in the central Mexican state <br>of Morelos. She grew up in a family where everyone could hear normally <br>except for one older deaf sister. Her parents didn’t seem to understand <br>her problem.<br><br>Every day, Aranda would walk to school with her other siblings, and then <br>stand in front of the building as they went inside. The door would <br>close, and she’d go back home. “I thought I was going to have notebooks, <br>pens, be able to go to school like all the other children,” she said. <br>She would point to the school, try to make her father understand what <br>she wanted, but he just laughed.<br><br>“I would cry every day. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t go to <br>school, and I couldn’t communicate that,” she said. “I was very frustrated.”<br>Related<br><br>Aranda’s mother died when she was six, and three weeks later, her father <br>remarried the family maid. Her new stepmother forced Aranda and her deaf <br>sister to clean the house, do the cooking, and wash all the clothes by <br>hand. “We didn’t feel like part of the family,” Aranda said.<br><br>When she was 11, Aranda says, she was molested by a neighbor, a woman <br>who would kiss her and touch her inappropriately. “I was confused <br>whether what she was doing was wrong or right,” she said.<br><br>Whenever she tried to communicate, by gesturing or miming, her family <br>would laugh, and make the one gesture she came to know too well—spinning <br>their finger around their ear: loco, crazy. Sometimes, her father would <br>beat her and she didn’t know why.<br><br>Aranda’s experience is not uncommon. There was no right to sign language <br>education for deaf children in Mexico until 2005, and even now there’s a <br>shortage of sign language teachers. For decades, being deaf was seen as <br>a mental incompetence, and deaf people were not allowed to drive or buy <br>homes. Many still get by by begging or working lower-than-minimum-wage jobs.<br><br>Many Mexican deaf kids like Aranda, who are born to a rural family <br>without deaf relatives, don’t get any kind of language education until a <br>late age. That can have a severe impact on their cognitive development <br>for the rest of their lives, said Rachel Mayberry, a linguist at UC-San <br>Diego who has studied language use among deaf people.<br><br>“A lot of people think that sign language is something that deaf people <br>can just do,” Mayberry said. “It’s not different from other language—if <br>nobody uses sign language with you, then you don’t have the opportunity <br>to learn it.”<br><br>The result is a little like being alone in a foreign country where you <br>don’t read or speak the language—except that you don’t have your own <br>country to go home to.<br><br>“I felt like I was trapped,” Aranda said.<br><br>That changed when she was 15, when an aunt brought her and her sister to <br>a church in Mexico City that ran a school for deaf people. “We went in <br>the church, and saw all these deaf people, and they were signing,” <br>Aranda said.<br><br>The first thing she learned was her name. Her aunt had brought her birth <br>certificate, and the teacher spelled it out on the board: R-O-S-A.<br><br>“When I learned that, I was motivated to learn more words,” Aranda <br>said. “I wanted to learn more about the world.” She started taking <br>classes in sign language and reading and writing.<br><br>One teacher in particular took the time to teach her everything—an <br>incredibly difficult process, starting as a teenager what most kids <br>learn when they’re three or four years old. “This woman changed my life, <br>she gave me life,” Aranda said, tears in her eyes. “She told me, you <br>have to learn, you can do this. She didn’t give up on me.”<br><br>Crossing over<br><br>Aranda married a deaf man when she was 21. Their three kids—one daughter <br>and two twin sons—were all born deaf (deafness is a recessive trait that <br>can be passed genetically). Her husband was abusive, and they fought <br>often. She ended up divorcing him and taking her kids to Tijuana, where <br>she worked for the government as a data clerk.<br><br>The city still lacked real education for the deaf. “I started thinking <br>I didn’t want my three deaf children going through the same experience I <br>had had growing up—no education, no schooling, no life,” Aranda said.<br><br>She heard from other deaf friends about a place called America, not too <br>far away, where there were great schools. With help from her co-workers, <br>she got a passport and a U.S. tourist visa, and assumed that she could <br>just continue her job after moving.<br><br>But when she and her kids crossed over the border, she quickly realized <br>she needed things she could hardly understand: a social security number, <br>a work permit, a green card. So she started working as a peddler, <br>selling bracelets and other trinkets in public places, making just <br>enough money to support her family. They lived in a cramped house in <br>Chula Vista, a suburb of San Diego that’s only a few miles north of Tijuana.<br><br>Aranda crossed over in 1996, just before Bill Clinton signed a <br>far-reaching anti-illegal immigration bill that stepped up border <br>controls and deportations. “People told me to be quiet and not get in <br>trouble, and I didn’t know why I was supposed to be hushed about it,” <br>she said. “I wanted a better education for my children, so I didn’t <br>think about the laws or things like that.”<br><br>She added, laughing, “Now I know all about that.”<br><br>For 18 years, I had been terrified and hiding around… Now I feel like a <br>normal person and I can have a normal life here.<br>- Rosa Aranda<br><br>According to asylum rules, immigrants who want to declare asylum must do <br>so while they’re still covered by a student or tourist visa or within a <br>year of their visa expiring. The process is more complicated for people <br>like Aranda who illegally overstayed their visa. To get around this, <br>Bajramovic, the lawyer, is arguing that the lack of education for many <br>of her deaf clients made it impossible for them to understand the rules.<br><br>“Most of them had no idea what a country is,” Bajramovic said. “Most had <br>no understanding of borders. They only knew that one place had trash on <br>the street and the other didn’t.”<br><br>That’s not to say that these people aren’t mentally capable, she <br>says, but “it’s a part of the persecution that happens when a country <br>does not make sure that their deaf people are provided with education.”<br><br>Some deaf immigrants have even worse stories than Aranda’s. Groups of <br>deaf Mexicans were trafficked to the U.S. in the ‘90s by gangs. They <br>were held in virtual slavery in cramped houses in New York and <br>California, and forced to beg on the subway and streets.<br><br>In the two decades since she crossed the border, Aranda has built a life <br>and a family in the U.S. She moved across the state several times, <br>saving money to send her kids to the best schools for the deaf. She’s <br>survived breast cancer twice.<br><br>But she always knew she was one wrong move away from being deported back <br>to her old life.<br><br>Out of the shadows<br><br>When a friend introduced Aranda and her family to Bajramovic five years <br>ago, they were struggling to get by. Her kids, who couldn’t afford <br>college and couldn’t work legally, were screen-printing T-shirts to make <br>money.<br><br>Aranda agreed to become one of Bajramovic’s clients and applied for <br>asylum. Her case, like many others, stretches on today. After applying, <br>she and others who are waiting for asylum approval receive work <br>authorization after half a year.<br><br>“Once I got that, I felt that I was safe, that I could go places without <br>being frightened of the police,” she said. “For 18 years, I had been <br>terrified and hiding around, driving without a proper license because <br>the laws forbid me to have one. Now I feel like a normal person and I <br>can have a normal life here.”<br><br>Hadley Bajramovic, the attorney representing hundreds of deaf immigrants <br>in their asylum cases.<br><br>Bajramovic says that once clients declare asylum and get a working <br>permit, it’s a sea change from past lives “living in the shadows, <br>completely cut off, sometimes exploited or trafficked or used by <br>employers, paid like fifty cents an hour.” Many get jobs at supermarket <br>chains or places like Goodwill, earning their first legal wages.<br><br>Aranda’s children have also been eligible for Obama’s Deferred Action <br>for Childhood Arrivals policy. Ian, her son who’s a translator, works <br>with the deaf Mexican community and is fluent in American and Mexican <br>sign language. His sister also works in translation, and his twin <br>brother is a visual designer studying at UCLA. The opportunity to go to <br>school and work openly have changed the lives of his whole family, he says.<br><br>“I’ve seen what my mom went through here in America,” he said. “Other <br>deaf people have no community, no support. I want to give back.”<br><br>Aranda’s older, deaf sister is still living in Mexico, and the two have <br>fallen out of touch. If her asylum is approved and she gets a green <br>card, Aranda said she hopes she can eventually help her sister come to <br>the U.S. and have a better life.<br><br>In the meantime, Aranda has to wait. Asylum offices around the country <br>are backed up, in part due to the huge influx of Central American women <br>and children who came into the U.S. last summer and declared asylum. The <br>Los Angeles asylum office, where many of Bajramovic’s clients are <br>applying, has wait times of more than four years between an application <br>and an interview.<br><br>Deaf applicants face their own logistical challenges because the asylum <br>office needs to hire trained interpreters, and often secondary <br>interpreters like Ian, who translate between different forms of sign <br>language.<br><br>A spokesperson for the U.S. citizenship and immigration services <br>declined to comment on the deaf immigrant cases.<br><br>Undocumented applicants can be deported if their asylum claims are <br>rejected, but that hasn’t happened in any of the 250 cases so far. New <br>rules put in place by the Obama administration prioritize resources to <br>deport undocumented immigrants with significant criminal convictions. <br>Almost all of the deaf immigrants that Bajramovic has helped apply have <br>no criminal record, she said.<br><br>Aranda says that while she worries about whether her asylum case is <br>approved, she’s focused on her family and spending time with her five <br>grandkids. None of them are deaf, but they’re all learning sign <br>language. While Aranda had no way to communicate when she was growing <br>up, they have many: English, Spanish, signing.<br><br>She hopes more deaf people facing what she faced have the opportunity to <br>come to the U.S. “A lot of deaf people have a lot of potential and are <br>very intelligent, but they have no ability to communicate, they don’t <br>have any ways to express themselves,” Aranda said. “That prevents them <br>from becoming the successful people they can become.”<br><br>Yahoo! - ABC News Network<br>© 2015 Fusion Media Network, LLC. All rights reserved.<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:white'>__<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></div></div></body></html>