A License To Abuse:
The Impact of Conditional Status on Female Immigrants

By Michelle J. Anderson

The following excerpt is from a much longer article originally published in volume 102 of the Yale Law Journal. Reprinted with author's permission. Copyright (c) 1993 by The Yale Law Journal Co., Inc.

Maria was born in the Dominican Republic. She married a United States citizen, immigrated to this country, and obtained "conditional" resident immigration status, which enabled her to remain legally in the United States provided that she stayed wedded to her spouse. Soon afterward, her husband began to brutalize her physically. "One time I had eight stitches in my head and a gash on the other side of my head, and he broke my ribs.... He would bash my head against the wall while we had sex. He kept threatening to kill me if I told the doctor what happened."⁽¹⁾ Afraid of the risk of deportation, Maria endured her husband's treatment for months. After she finally fled, her spouse demanded that she return to his apartment for her immigration documents. At first, she told him, "No, you're going to hit me." But then she realized that she had to go because she needed the papers. She described the consequences: "He beat me on the head. He sat on my stomach. He put a knife to my throat and raped me. Then he threw me naked on the street."⁽²

Sue,⁽³⁾ a Chinese national, immigrated and obtained conditional residency after marrying a U.S. citizen. Like Maria, Sue had to remain married to maintain her legal immigration status. Unfortunately, the similarities did not end there. Sue's husband repeatedly beat her. "You do exactly what I say, or I'll call Immigration," her husband warned, kicking her in the neck and face. "You need me." Sue feared she would not live. "Her story is typical of the battered immigrant women we see," explains Beckie Masaki, Executive Director of San Francisco's Asian Women's Shelter. "The batterer uses his citizenship to control and humiliate his wife."⁽⁴⁾ Pat Eng, founder of the New York Asian Women's Center, concurs, "Batterers invariably use [ ] the threat of deportation as a weapon in the abuse of their alien wives."⁽⁵⁾

Female conditional residents are at risk for abuse due not only to their status as women in a culture in which violence against women is relatively common,⁽⁶⁾ but also to their position as immigrants who marry citizens or legal permanent residents (LPR' s).⁽⁷⁾ Studies vary widely in estimating the percentage (between 12-50%) of all married women who experience some form of domestic battery in their lives.⁽⁸⁾ Whatever the rate in the general population, the percentage for immigrant women is probably higher.⁽⁹⁾ Linguistic and cultural differences between spouses may hamper communication, tolerance, and understanding.⁽¹⁰⁾ The immigrant wife may be economically⁽¹¹⁾ and psychologically⁽¹²⁾ dependent upon her spouse, limiting her alternatives to the relationship and placing her at increased risk for domestic violence.⁽¹³⁾ Stresses associated with migration itself, discrimination against racial minorities in this country, poverty, unemployment, and crowded living conditions heighten the chance that a husband will become abusive.⁽¹⁴⁾ Forty-eight percent of Latinas in a Coalition for Immigrant Rights and Services study reported that domestic violence against them had increased since they immigrated to the United States.⁽¹⁵⁾ Therefore, conditional resident status affects the lives of women who already face an enhanced risk of domestic violence from their partners. […]

[…] Foreign nationals can come to marry U.S. citizens or LPR's in a variety of ways. For example, a citizen may live overseas for some time, marry, and then bring the spouse to the United States, as occasionally occurs with military wives. Sometimes foreign nationals and U.S. citizens or LPR's first come to know each other entirely through the mail, after which the foreign national immigrates and marries, as with many mail-order bride unions. In other circumstances, a foreign national enters the United States on a student, tourist, business, or other visa, marries, or simply remains in this country beyond his or her visa limits, and then weds a legal resident. Other immigrants reside in the United States illegally for some time and then marry citizens or LPR's.

Unique stresses can arise when two people from different cultures marry. Two types of intercultural relationships illustrate some reasons why immigrant women may be particularly susceptible to abuse in these circumstances: marriages involving military and mail-order brides. These conditional residents are not the only immigrant women at risk of battery. Their problems, however, illustrate the power disparity and particular stresses that may operate in families in which conditional resident status applies. […]

[…] Men stationed overseas in the armed forces may marry women born in foreign countries, sometimes referred to as "war brides." As a result of the deployment of U.S. troops in Asian countries, for example, over 200,000 Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, and Filipino women have married U.S. servicemen and immigrated to the United States since World War II.⁽²¹⁾

The frequency of abuse in military families is proportionally much greater than in civilian families.⁽²²⁾ Various stresses associated with military life contribute to the increased risk of battery. The transient nature of military service increases social isolation, preventing family members from establishing roots in a community."⁽²³⁾ Employment and financial pressures, as well as extended separation when active duty soldiers are stationed away from home, add pressure to these families' lives.⁽²⁴⁾ Perhaps most significant, aggressive values indoctrinated into soldiers encourage them to use physical force to express displeasure when faced with domestic problems.⁽²⁵⁾

The severity of domestic abuse in military families "makes the usual" patterns of violence in civilian families pale by comparison.⁽²⁶⁾ In one study, for instance, those employed in the military used weapons on their wives almost twice as often as civilian batterers, and "three-fourths of the military cases were in the dangerously life-endangering category compared to only about one-third of the civilian cases."⁽²⁷⁾ Researchers have concluded that "[t]he worst of the civilian cases were the norm for the military cases."⁽²⁸⁾ What is more, since military wives are traditionally expected to participate in and support their husbands' careers, thus playing a special role in the success or failure of those careers,⁽²⁹⁾ wives are generally reluctant to report spousal abuse to the military police or other authorities."⁽³⁰⁾

These problems may be exacerbated for immigrant women. In addition to aggressive military indoctrination, cultural and linguistic differences between the partners can impede communication and increase frustration.⁽³¹⁾ Without the nearby support of family and friends, immigrant women are isolated in a foreign environment.⁽³²⁾ Captain Nancy K. Raiha, an army social worker, explains:

In any intercultural marriage differences in norms, values, expectations, and habits may lead to tension and conflict. Social pressures (i.e. discrimination) are sometimes an additional burden to the interracial couple.... Couples who are unable to communicate verbally seem more likely in some cases to resort to physical means of expressing displeasure and frustration.⁽³³⁾

These stresses on the military family relationship increase the risk that "men who already have a proclivity for acting out their anger" will do so.⁽³⁴⁾

One woman's situation typifies the problems immigrants may face as military brides. Merta met her husband while he was stationed in Greece. They married and moved to Texas. Merta spoke little English. Her husband was obsessively jealous and controlling, and he forbade her to leave the house. Playing on her media-inspired image of the United States, he warned her that the outside world was a "death trap." She was forbidden to leave his side or speak to anyone, and he beat her routinely. Not long before she escaped the relationship, Merta's husband had won a "Sergeant of the Year" award.⁽³⁵⁾  […]

[…] "Mail-order brides," women who are advertised in catalogs (the most popular of which is entitled Cherry Blossoms)⁽³⁶⁾ for marriage to American men, generally come from destitute conditions in parts of Asia."⁽³⁷⁾ Most are born in the Philippines, a country troubled by political strife and high unemployment."⁽³⁸⁾ Over 70% of Philippine women live in poverty, thus making them particularly vulnerable to the mail-order industry.⁽³⁹⁾

The mail-order bride business appears to be thriving.⁽⁴⁰⁾ Approximately 200 companies operate in the United States⁽⁴¹⁾ and an estimated 2000 to 3500 American men find wives through these catalogs each year.⁽⁴²⁾ In June 1990, the government of the Philippines, alarmed at reports of widespread abuse of Philippine women in other countries, outlawed bride agencies. That move simply drove the mail-order business underground without significantly affecting the international trade.⁽⁴³⁾

Mail-order bride relationships begin when a company travels to the Philippines (or another economically troubled country) to recruit women for its catalogs.⁽⁴⁴⁾ Bolstered by the promise of a glamorous life in the United States,⁽⁴⁵⁾ the company convinces multitudes of young Philippine women⁽⁴⁶⁾ to list themselves. Typically, an older American man,⁽⁴⁷⁾ having become disenchanted with the changing gender roles of the past few decades,⁽⁴⁸⁾ joins a mail-order bride club to find a "beautiful, faithful, Asian Wife."⁽⁴⁹⁾ The company sends him a catalog with the pictures, vital statistics, and addresses of potential mates. The man usually conducts a mass mailing to women he finds appealing and continues to write to promising prospects, hoping to "woo" one into marriage."⁽⁵⁰⁾ Alternatively, the industry encourages him to travel to the Philippines, mail-order catalogs in hand, to track down women using their listed addresses.⁽⁵¹⁾ Mail-order catalogs offer men scripts to use once in the presence of these women. If all else fails, one publisher explains, a man must be a "beast type." "If she can't be taken by [more subtle] tactics, use speed and force," he writes.⁽⁵²⁾ "As it is said, action is better than words. But I say, 'action with the combination of words are, the best.' But be careful because you might be charged with rape and risk your reputation."⁽⁵³⁾

When these cross-cultural interchanges do result in marriage, unrealistic expectations on both sides often mean severe incompatibility at best, and outright abuse at worst.⁽⁵⁴⁾ As Carmencita Hernandez, Chair of the Women's Committee of the National Council of Canadian-Filipino Associations, explains, "[w]hen a Filipino woman--who is stereotyped as meek--stands up for herself, the trouble begins."⁽⁵⁵⁾ In one case, a twenty-two-year-old woman named Ngan married a U.S. citizen and immigrated to this country. Ngan was not the picture bride her husband believed he had ordered. "The first time he beat me, I was too afraid to do anything about it," she said. The second assault drew blood. Her neighbors took her to the hospital, and then to an Asian battered women's shelter.⁽⁵⁶⁾

The story of a twenty-four-year-old woman named Raco offers another example. Raco married a U.S. citizen who had courted her by mail for ten years. Soon after she came to this country, he began to beat her because of differences she had with his parents. His assaults worsened because she did not want to bear children immediately. When she became pregnant, "[h]e threatened not to sponsor me for permanent residence if I didn't carry the pregnancy to term," she said. But the violence escalated, even after she decided to have the baby.⁽⁵⁷⁾ When she was, six-months pregnant, he beat her so fiercely that she feared for the life of her unborn child and fled to a shelter.⁽⁵⁸⁾

What mail-order brides such as Ngan and Raco have in common with military wives such as Merta is that they are all conditional residents. They face the problems of a statutory framework that gives much of the control over their immigration status to their abusive spouses.[…]

[…] Immigrant women usually do not turn to the mental health professionals or to the counselors needed to prove mental cruelty.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ Indications are that many cannot. A survey of the psychiatrists, psychologists, and clinical social workers in the entire Los Angeles area, which has one of the largest concentrations of immigrants in the United States, revealed that there were "very few" bilingual professionals available. Of those available, most were private and would not evaluate clients without charge.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ Without resources to pay for a translator or social workers, psychiatrists, or psychologists,⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ an abused immigrant cannot prove extreme mental cruelty.⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ Moreover, the evidence required to establish extreme mental cruelty focuses entirely on the mental state of the victim, rather than on the actions of the abuser. A resilient woman who does not clinically evince the debilitating effects of psychological cruelty may not be able to obtain a waiver, even if she deserves one based on the level of abuse she sustains. […]

[…] Poverty, lack of access to services, lack of privacy in extended family dwellings and closely knit communities, and fears for their own safety⁽¹¹⁸⁾ can impede many battered conditional residents from obtaining waivers under the present regulations.⁽¹¹⁹⁾ Before she calls for help, an immigrant woman must face the possibility of ending her marriage, which means accepting the social consequences attendant to divorce in her community. As in many nonimmigrant communities, strong mores concerning religion, marriage, divorce, family, and gender roles hinder women from stopping domestic violence and ending abusive relationships.⁽¹²⁰⁾ In particular, traditional social systems favoring patriarchal relations⁽¹²¹⁾ are strong predictive variables of violence.⁽¹²²⁾  […]