Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle, August 24, 2009
{snip}
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco criticized immigration officials who, in ordering the family deported, decided that the girl had suffered no serious harm when her genitals were mutilated as a newborn.
Any form of female genital mutilation is “horrifically brutal” and amounts to persecution under established precedents in federal courts and the Justice Department’s immigration courts, the court said.
{snip}
Federal courts have granted asylum to women who fled their countries after being genitally mutilated or threatened with mutilation. In this case, the parents argued that one of their younger daughters would face ritual mutilation if deported to Indonesia, and that sparing her from deportation would be meaningless if the rest of her family was deported.
In denying asylum, immigration judges cited a State Department report that said female genital mutilation as practiced in Indonesia “involves minimal short-term pain, suffering and complications.”
Contrasting the procedure to a court’s description of mutilation in Ethiopia, where the genitals are cut with knives and recovery takes 40 days, immigration courts said the Indonesian girl had not been persecuted and that neither she nor her family was entitled to asylum.
{snip}
An immigration review board’s “attempt to parse the distinction between differing forms of female genital mutilation is . . . a threat to the rights of women in a civilized society,” Judge Margaret McKeown said in the court ruling.
{snip}
Original article
Email
Bob Egelko
at begelko@sfchronicle.com .
(Posted on August 28, 2009)
Comments
I wonder how it is that to surgically alter the genitals of a female because of religious tradition, cultural norms, claimed health benefits, or cosmetic preferences is considered a horror and an abomination, while the surgical alteration of the genitals of a male due to religious tradition, cultural norms, claimed health benefits, or cosmetic preferences is considered as natural as sunshine, and beyond comment or criticism.
As far as I know, every society that practices female circumcision also practices male circumcision, while there are many societies that practice the latter only. Including the US.
In any case, be prepared for even more “refugees” to be admitted.
Typically courts are not supposed to second-guess the factual findings of administrative agencies. It sounds like this court not only did that, but it went off and did its own selective fact-finding as well. Simply citing an opposing authority does not refute the immigration board’s finding. Not surprising, though, given it’s the 9th Circuit.
That said, it’s unclear to me why this board debated the severity of the procedure at all. It seems irrelevant to the issue of persecution, legally defined. Hopefully that’s why the court reached the conclusion it did, but then simply got carried away with its rhetoric. The end of the article, omitted here, does say the case is remanded to the board to consider the likelihood of persecution, i.e., the correct test.
So everybody that can’t remedy their own problems gets a free ticket here? America is becoming a dumping grounds for those that would rather cut and run than fight for the rights they believe in. Meanwhile those that are responsible for designing and creating and (fighting) for this country get disposessed. There is a practical limmit to how much you can save the world without becoming a hopeless fool!
No matter how hard I try,I can’t remember a single soul asking me if I wanted to get circumsized. They just went ahead and did it without my permission.
So I’m applying for asylum. Mutilation without permission is mutilation without permission,no matter where it takes place.
For the record,I was mutilated in 1959 in Central Texas,and for the average lunatic in San Francisco,Central Texas a generation and a half ago certainly qualifies as a foreign country. We went hunting,had guns,and listened to AM radio stations.
So I need to find out where I go in San Francisco to get all my free stuff. Anyone know where I start the process????
Why don’t they drop the pretenses and just make being born non-white grounds for asylum?
Presumably, in the family under consideration, the parents had the ultimate authority if ‘genital mutilation’ was practised on their daughter.
Some European countries grant asylum for the same reasons. I wonder if I could apply for asylum in Germany since I was circumcized at birth without my parents consent or mine.
I agree with #3. They say these immigrants only come for a “better life”. I’m sick of hearing this. The only problem with this reason is that White people built this country, not Mexicans or Asians. White people may want to leave this country white for their descendants.
A multicultarist will tell you that all cultures are equal and none (except the white race, which should be eliminated) are better than the others. Logically,these people should be screaming for these cultures to be allowed to do whatever they please in the confines of their race and culture and should be left alone.
Sweden (in this case to its credit) has made this prodedure, when performed involuntarily, on either sex illegal. And despite indignant protests from the Semitic communities about infringment of human rights, Sweden has firmly stood its ground. Not in their country you can’t! It is the first country to have passed such legislation.
Indonesia is the largest country in the Muslim world. With a population of 234 million, Indonesians outnumber white Americans ( estimated to be 220 million).
To avoid the wholesale movement of Indonesia and the Third World to America, legal means must be utilized to the fullest extent.
[Sweden] “is the first country to have passed such legislation”
I was circumcized at the age of 11. Nobody told me at that time what I was going to lose. As the Mike NY #1 states, it was due to “religious tradition, cultural norms, claimed health benefits, or cosmetic preferences is considered as natural as sunshine, and beyond comment or criticism”. I learned last year on my own what I lost (I’m 24). May I apply for asylum in Europe too? *sarcasm off*
Let me see if I got this straight.
If you haven’t been GM’d yet, then you can come to the US because it might happen to you.
If you have, then you can come to the US because it has happened to you, even thought the damage is done already and coming to the US won’t undo your GM.
So basically, if you have a vagina, you can come to the US.
So every primitive female on earth can come to the US. Then she can bring in the evil men she is supposedly fleeing from, the witches who preform the mutiliation and the rest of her extended family, probably 200 primitives on the chain of migration.
Then NOW, ACLU, $PLC, ADL, AJC etc can bring lawsuits to legalize female mutiliation on the grounds of diversity, multiculturalism and affirmative action for barbarian, primitive, medically dangerous, and savage activities.
“Presumably, in the family under consideration, the parents had the ultimate authority if ‘genital mutilation’ was practised on their daughter. So why is the family claiming the victim status?”
Often other family members will preform the operation without the parent’s consent. “Come visit your cousins and stay for a few days.” That’s what happened to the Dutch Somali activist Ayaam Hirsi Ali.
Her Father absolutely forbade the operation. Her Mother obeyed the Father. Mom, grandma and kids lived in Kenya. But Father spent most of his time in Somali either fomenting revolution or in prison for revolutionary activities. Mom went to visit Dad in Somali, leaving the kids in the care of her Mother, maternal grandmother.
The 3 kids, 1 boy, 2 girls were all under the age of 10. Grandma arranged for a witch doctor (male) to come and do the operation without anesthetic or even sharp razors. The 3 kids all got infections and other problems. The boys’ circumcision was of the African, not the American variety. It involves peeling skin off the thighs and stomach. The girl’s was the Somali “complete” variety, basically nothing left including most of the uretha tube.
The kids went back to bedwetting and suffered nightmares for months. Of course they hated the grandmother. Ayaan attributes her sister’s suicide to emotional problems stemming from the mutiliation. Take away the religious and cultural garbage. The grandmother arranged for a sadist to invade the home and torture her grandchildren leaving them with a life time of medical and emotional problems.
The level of medieval superstition, sadism, psychosis, ignorance, and psychotic insanity inherent to the followers of Islam is literally beyond the comprehension of the Western mind…
