Connecting immigration policy to community, workforce and equality can make reforms more effective—and safer for women seeking asylum.

Editor’s note: This article is the final installment of Ms.’ three-part series on women, asylum and immigration policy. Get caught up on Parts 1 and 2 now (or later—this piece makes sense without them.)

How can past feminist policy wins inform a better immigration future?

Finding the connection between immigration policy and issues like healthcare, workforce and economic competitiveness requires a clear vision for the future—something feminists captured in the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994, one of the rare examples of successfully folding immigration reforms into a broader policy initiative. 

The original VAWA provisions established sweeping new grants to increase the protection of women from domestic violence and to reduce barriers to prosecution of abusers, including creating federal criminal penalties for domestic violence and stalking. It also created special exceptions to immigration laws that provided women and children survivors a way to obtain permanent legal status. This was an incredible breakthrough, as the immigration status of many abused women and children was tied to, and dependent on, the abuser—preventing many of them from leaving abusive relationships.

By 2000, however, the immigration provisions had been diluted by the devastating 1996 “reform” act, and more immigrant women were ineligible for benefits. After months of intense negotiations, an improved and expanded package of immigration reforms once again was included as part of the reauthorization and expansion of VAWA. According to several women deeply involved in negotiations, immigration rights groups consciously framed these concerns as protecting women from violence, not as expanding immigration benefits. That framework insulated the measures in VAWA from outside attacks for many years, in part because women’s groups embraced the importance of protecting all women from abuse, making the measures more about reducing barriers and improving processes than changing immigration law.

It wasn’t easy, says Esther Olavarría, immigration counsel to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) from 1998 to 2007. She remembers the VAWA negotiations for their intensity and for the deep commitment a bipartisan group of women shared to make whole these protections for women. 

“I think what helped here was that you had an issue that impacted people of any status. American or immigrant—abuse impacts so many people,” she says. “I think that helped tremendously. You had that commitment from people who were fighting to address that bigger problem. If you wanted to make all people impacted by this abuse whole, including relief for immigrants was a critical piece.”

Olavarría, whose family fled Cuba when she was a child, was at the center of negotiations for multiple bipartisan immigration reform efforts. She taught a generation of Hill staffers (including me) that understanding what people really want requires patience and creativity.

Passing legislation, Olavarría says, “is a question of continuous conversations among like-minded people and then conversations with their own side, their own folks trying to persuade, convince, educate their allies.”

In the case of VAWA, folding protections for immigrant women into the goal of protecting all women from abuse created room for more conversation and a continuum of support that, once acknowledged, became harder to reject.

… you had an issue that impacted people of any status. American or immigrant—abuse impacts so many people.

Esther Olavarría, immigration counsel to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), 1998-2007

According to Deeana Jang, the former policy director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders during the Biden administration, the key is being fully engaged. “We have to center the experience of immigrants within broader issues,” she says, and then, “try to think of solutions that work for everyone.”

Jang has held leadership roles in nonprofits and cabinet agencies, championing immigration, health equity, education, survivor’s rights and civil rights for years. One of her long-term frustrations has been the inability of many advocates, within immigration and more broadly, to see the importance of connecting the dots.

She notes that immigrant benefits were wrapped into VAWA, which was then attached to a bigger crime bill in 1994, ultimately making both more likely to pass: “It was really good getting the buy-in from the women’s rights groups and the domestic violence groups.”

At the same time, she adds, “some healthcare and benefits advocates and members of Congress didn’t want to touch immigration—didn’t want to include immigrants in healthcare—[because] immigration was a poison pill.”

Immigration remains a poison pill on many issues, perhaps because it’s so closely associated with disruption of the status quo. And for those who worry that they will be displaced or ignored as the country changes, as well as for those whose racism blinds them, opposing immigration measures, no matter how counterproductive, will remain a popular approach.

But we can take the lessons learned from other initiatives, like Welcoming America or the campaign for VAWA, to create a framework in which we offer solutions that make the national interest real and concrete, proposing immigration fixes that are part of a bigger solution.

While this would not eliminate the need for targeted immigration legislation, a new framework could move some of the biggest and most controversial pieces out of the limelight and into broader discussions of economic reform, community safety and equality.

Each time the current administration makes it more difficult for asylum seekers to qualify for protection under U.S. law, it fuels the prejudice that people fleeing violence don’t have legitimate asylum claims. 

In fact, most immigration bills, whether comprehensive reforms or more targeted fixes, fall into three main categories—reforms that can advance economic well-being, reforms that often purport to increase safety, and those that try to protect immigrant rights or strip them away. This distillation of immigration as a combination of seeking prosperity, safety, and rights or dignity can be the conversation starter we need to remake the immigration system.

• We all want a strong and thriving economy where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. 
• We all want to feel safe in our homes and on our streets, to be free of violence and fear.  
• We all want the dignity that comes from treating people as equals, respecting differences, ensuring due process, and justice.  

In other words, our goal should be Restoring Economic Opportunity, Protecting Every Community, and Treating Everyone with Dignity (RESPECTED). We can apply this RESPECTED framework strategically within immigration reform to create new opportunities and partnerships that break down silos between issues.

The economic aspect of immigration reform is perhaps the most well-developed, as the evidence that immigration is critical to economic growth is overwhelming. But it isn’t enough to say that legalization, for instance, will benefit the economy, as that won’t sway voters who believe their own economic opportunity is stunted by competition with immigrants. Addressing that fear—loss of economic opportunity—means opening a dialogue on what communities need.

Is there a package of proposals that collectively advance the whole community? What do we need to restore economic security?

The pages of Ms. are filled with answers to this question. Better childcare, wage equity, parental leave, protection from harassment, all quickly come to mind. When we ask what makes all women whole, however, eliminating barriers caused by lack of immigration status, from fewer job opportunities to lower wages to greater risk of harassment and exploitation, take their place in the list. A viable legalization program could be one of the fastest ways to eliminate those barriers and contribute to a stronger economy and more opportunity for everyone. When it is included as part of a package of economic incentives, job training, better childcare and more, legalization could become part of creating more economic opportunity for women, not simply a fix to the immigration system.

Similarly, we can ask what protecting every community really means. As the public disgust and outrage demonstrates, it’s not mass deportations conducted by masked agents who whisk lawful residents and foreign students away. We need to probe what the community needs and wants, again offering solutions that encompass practical immigration measures as part of a much bigger approach.

What kind of economic incentives and education help people feel safe? What kind of policing and community involvement is needed? How do we protect each other?

Finally, the RESPECTED framework grounds rights and protections in dignity, offering the opportunity to discuss both Constitutional rights and the simpler courtesies that we should all receive. Treating everyone with dignity can and should run through all legislative proposals, regardless of issue, but it also expands the possibilities for making change happen.

The erosion of due process in immigration is so severe that we cannot ignore it, but what is the best vehicle for change? Is it a bill that addresses only immigration issues or one that increases protections for anyone held in federal custody or one that focuses on increased oversight to enforce existing rights? There’s no right answer, but identifying similarities across different issues affecting different populations may help us build new partnerships and gather allies.

Ultimately, the RESPECTED framework could give us another chance at immigration reform by asking a different set of questions. It rejects mass deportation and isolation in favor of welcoming immigrants and imagining a better future for all communities. It encourages us to listen and then to ask how immigration policy can contribute to that future. And it gives us the chance, as Cynthia Buiza says, to become good ancestors.

In the Matter of K-E-S-G-, the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals recently denied asylum to a Salvadoran woman stalked and threatened by gang members, ruling that her persecution was not “on account of” her gender, even though she maintained that in her country, women are treated as property. It marked the Trump administration’s first attempt to roll back protections recognizing the role gender plays in asylum claims, particularly those involving domestic abuse, sexual violence or trafficking.

In the case of women who are victims of gender-based violence, it will likely encourage mistreatment by immigration enforcement officers already predisposed to discount women’s stories and experiences. Not only will some women be discouraged from applying for asylum, but many more who try to assert their claims may be dismissed out of hand and removed without any hearing at all.

In the first Trump administration, in the Matter of A-B-, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ attempt to deny gender-based claims to another Salvadoran woman—one who was fleeing domestic violence—unleashed a torrent of negative decisions and added to the climate of disrespect for immigrants cultivated in the Department of Homeland Security. Eventually, the A-B- decision was overturned by the Board of Immigration Appeals and A.B., or Anabel, as she identified herself during a recent press briefing, received asylum.

She has a message for the women reeling from the Matter of K-E-S-G-:

“I have felt very glad that my case has been able to help other women escaping similar situations of violence. But now I am hearing that this government is trying to do the same thing to another woman, putting her life in danger and using her case to close the door to other women. When they tell people they have to return to the country they have fled, where there is so much violence, many are sent back to die. 

“What I desire most is for all women who are fleeing abuse in their country to have their asylum cases heard and to be safe here. The situation right now is dire. The struggle continues. But they have to keep fighting.”