MENTAL HEALTH EVIDENCE BLOG
The Clinical & Forensic Psychology Practice of Dr. Glen Skoler
DRGlenSkoler@Gmail.com • (240) 605-2988
MENTAL HEALTH EVIDENCE BLOG
The Clinical & Forensic Psychology Practice of Dr. Glen Skoler
DRGlenSkoler@Gmail.com • (240) 605-2988
The terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001, as well as increasing concern over illegal aliens during an economic recession, have focused judicial scrutiny on the legal exceptions immigrants can raise to prevent their deportation. The following is a list of these exceptions and how psychological evaluation and testing can support such claims.
Extreme and Exceptional Hardship
U.S. immigration law permits psychological evidence on behalf of those facing deportation, if the “removal” from the U.S. could result in “extreme and exceptional hardship,” usually to children, parents and other family members who are U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents.
Courts have been clear that the person subject to removal proceedings must present arguments that go beyond the claim that their home country is generally more dangerous than the U.S.–– or that their U.S. citizen children, born in America, would lack the benefits of the U.S. educational system and opportunities. Rather, courts require a showing of extreme and exceptional hardship--otherwise many people from many countries would make the claim they were simply better off in the U.S.
I have often found psychological testing helpful to support these arguments. Perhaps one could statistically demonstrate, for example, that an adult, subject to removal proceedings, really does have serious post-traumatic stress disorder, in the 95th percentile, compared to other people. Or perhaps the U.S. citizen children do in fact have unusual medical, psychological or educational needs which psychoeducational testing could confirm.
Political Asylum and Persecution
Another exception involves the risk of persecution, if deported, due to ethnicity, religion, political convictions, gender orientation or other protected classes. Psychological evaluation can certainly be effective in assessing issues of post-traumatic stress, risk of harm and vulnerability to persecution.
Spousal Abuse Exception
The government is suspicious when immigrants have short marriages to U.S. citizens, become divorced, but then want to stay in the U.S. based on the citizenship they attained through the marriage. However, if the foreign spouse was subject to abusive physical, emotional or financial control in the marriage, the divorce need not result in deportation. Psychological evaluation in these situations often focuses on the marital dynamics, the vulnerability of the spouse, and assessments of abuse and post-traumatic stress.
Waiver of Citizenship Requirements
Psychological evaluation can also inform cases in which immigrants have trouble learning English or passing the required citizenship tests. IQ, learning disabilities, and problems of memory and aging are all potential problems interfering with these requirements.
Here are some of the immigration cases I have evaluated:
1)a man from Pakistan tortured in a jail;
2)a deeply depressed African woman who was raped by rebel soldiers after they forced her to watch her family being killed;
3)two children born in America but in danger of being deported with their mother to a Central American country known for child organ harvesting, and in which their family had been specifically targeted by a drug crime syndicate;
4)a “Russian Bride” suddenly subject to abuse and financial control upon marriage, who successfully made the argument that her brief marriage was in good faith, and that her resulting U.S. citizenship should not be revoked;
5)an African woman who was jailed and raped when she inquired at a prison about her activist husband;
6)a Christian woman who survived the attack on her church by jumping into a roadside ditch in the Philippines;
7)a woman desperately fighting her deportation to Africa to save her own U.S. citizen daughter from the same female genital mutilation ritual she had suffered as a child.
This kind of work has taught me a great deal about human rights issues in other parts of the world. I often wish I could somehow tell the American public that not all “illegal immigrants” attempting to avoid deportation are terrorists, or simply crossing the border with the hope of a higher standard of living and American social services. For many of the immigrants I have evaluated, the Statue of Liberty is far more than a tourist attraction.
Immigration Law & The Value of Psych Testing
Tuesday, March 9, 2010