Help with info!!?

Question

My best friend is lesbian and she is not American. She is here to visit me. In her country, homosexuals are hugely discriminated and even physically abused. I want her to stay in America, legally. How does one go about it? Is discrimination and abuse based on sexual orientation good reason to make her get legal status to stay here? Any info will be appreciated.
Thanks!

Answer 1

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HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (AP) -- Even now, eight years later, Jose Cruz cannot speak calmly about the events that drove him from his homeland. His voice cracks, his shoulders heave and tears slide down his smooth, delicate cheeks.
By his account, Cruz was routinely raped, beaten and humiliated in El Salvador for being a "culero" -- a "******" -- despite his every effort to hide his sexual orientation and act straight, even macho. Finally, threatened with death by paramilitary thugs, he fled to the United States and began life anew.

Now settled in the relative sanctuary of New York's Long Island suburbs, Cruz had pinned his hopes on what once would have been an impossibility: to be granted political asylum on the basis of his sexual orientation.

Last week, he got his wish.

Since June 1994, when Attorney General Janet Reno quietly cracked open the door to such cases, more than 40 gay men or lesbians have been granted asylum because of their sexual orientation -- or, more accurately, because they are members of the "social class" of homosexuals facing persecution.

More remarkably, at least one man, a heterosexual, has been granted asylum because he is HIV-positive -- a diagnosis that, in other circumstances, could get him barred from the United States.

These cases, along with the far more publicized case of an African woman fleeing genital mutilation, represent a significant rethinking of the applications of asylum law. Once reserved for those whose religious or political views made them the targets of official persecution, asylum law is increasingly being applied to those who are outcasts by virtue of cultural -- or medical -- differences with the prevailing norm.

Their case histories are shocking testimony to the degradations suffered by homosexuals in many parts of the world -- and to the relative tolerance of the United States. Among them:

--A gay Mexican man who was harassed and robbed by police, then raped and brutalized by soldiers.

--A gay Brazilian man who was repeatedly raped at gunpoint by police. On one occasion, he was taken to jail, where the commanding officer encouraged criminals to gang-rape and brutalize him. After fleeing to the United States, he discovered he was infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

--A feminist and lesbian activist who won asylum after arguing she could face the death penalty for homosexuality in her native Iran.

--A Russian lesbian who was repeatedly arrested, expelled from school and fired from jobs, then threatened with psychiatric institutionalization to "cure" her.

It is impossible to say just how common -- or uncommon -- these cases are. Asylum case records are confidential, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service won't say how many cases have been decided on the basis of sexual orientation. The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in San Francisco counts 43 cases through July 5, 1996, but that count is not exhaustive.

It seems safe to say, though, that the gay and lesbian cases account for only a tiny fraction of all asylum cases. In 1994, the last year for which complete figures are available, the United States received 146,468 applications for political asylum and granted 8,131.

That doesn't placate some critics of U.S. immigration policy, who are alarmed by the gay and lesbian asylum claims. "We think this is part of a broader process designed to completely corrupt the meaning of the political asylum laws," said K.C. McAlpin, deputy director of FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates much stricter controls on immigration.

McAlpin said he sympathizes with gays and lesbians who face intolerance, but believes they should be working to change the attitudes in their native lands. He draws a distinction between social ostracism and political persecution.

"What about kids who dress like punk rockers?" McAlpin asked. "That may be frowned upon in a country like Iran. Is that going to be grounds for political asylum in the United States?"

Advocates for the gay and lesbian asylum-seekers say their clients are very much the victims of political persecution, whether or not it stems from a conscious government campaign against homosexuality. Their tormentors are frequently police officers, the very people to whom they would ordinarily turn for help.

Hiroshi Motomura, a professor of law at the University of Colorado who edits the leading legal casebook on asylum law, said the gay asylum cases are based on "well-settled precedent." He sees them as part of a general broadening of asylum law that includes cases of persecution against women.

However, Motomura questioned the wisdom of a judgment last year that granted asylum to a heterosexual man from Togo on the basis of his infection with HIV. The man argued he would be a social outcast in Togo, and would receive poor medical care there.

"I question personally whether the unavailability of drugs is what asylum was intended for," Motomura said. Taken to its logical extreme, he noted, such a precedent could open U.S. borders to tens of millions of the world's sick and outcast.

In addition to the man from Togo, several HIV-positive gay men have been granted asylum. In some cases, their HIV status was cited as a supporting reason they likely would suffer persecution.

Being HIV-positive still can be grounds for deportation from the United States. But lawyers who work in asylum law insist there is no contradiction -- the whole point of asylum law is that humanitarian concerns should sometimes override normal immigration restrictions.

The cases of gay and lesbian asylum have come from throughout the world, but most are from Latin America, probably because it is simply closer. European countries, which have similar asylum policies, are more likely to grant asylum to gays and lesbians from the Middle East and the former Soviet Bloc nations.

Among the Latin American asylum-seekers, Jose Cruz offers a fairly typical case.

The middle child in a working-class family of nine, Cruz grew up in a small city in El Salvador and began to experience intolerance and ridicule long before he knew he was homosexual -- or even what homosexuality was.

"From an early age, I was effeminate," he writes in his application for asylum. This caused his parents to suspect he was gay -- something he didn't realize himself until adolescence. In one of the tragicomic episodes of his young life, he recalls the time his parents sent him to a prostitute to "cure my effeminate ways and homosexuality and make me a man."

He said he paid the prostitute to say they'd had sex -- a lie.

Meanwhile, at age 13, Cruz said, he was raped by a local soldier. It was the first of several such incidents, always involving soldiers, police or paramilitary "death squads."

In what Cruz described as the most terrifying of these encounters, and one of the only ones that did not involve rape, he and two friends were surrounded on a San Salvador street in the summer of 1987 by two paramilitary commandos -- young men who were "buffed and pumped," Cruz would recall. They ordered Cruz and his friends to the pavement and began to search their belongings.

One of his friends, en route to a drag show, had a bag containing a dress, wig and makeup. When the commandos opened it, Cruz said, "They screamed, `Culeros (*******), you're a disgrace to society! You deserve to die now!'"

The men beat them with the butts of their guns, Cruz said. "I felt faint from the pain of their blows." Finally, just as one had pulled a knife and pledged to "cut up your little ****** bodies into little pieces for the vultures," three cars drove by and parked. The commandos fired a shot into the air and fled.

It was this incident, and the memory of those insults, that reduced Cruz to tears during a recent interview. He spoke through a translator at the small, neat apartment he now shares with a sister in suburban Hempstead.

He is still a strikingly effeminate man, dressed this day in a woman's black-and-white checked jacket, his long black hair pulled into a ponytail, a black leather hat perched on his head.

Since coming to the United States illegally in 1988, crossing over the Mexican border hidden in the recesses of a mobile home, Cruz has scratched out a living painting trucks, washing hair in a beauty salon and, lately, cleaning a shop. He dreams of getting his beauticians' license and returning to a hair salon.

Clearly, the United States has been good to him. Not once, Cruz said, has he been victimized because of his homosexuality. "And if I were ever to experience that, I would have fled this country, too," he said.

Then he amends that statement. There is a crucial difference between the abuses homosexuals suffer in the United States and those he suffered in El Salvador, he said.

"Because, you know, there are laws that protect people, including homosexuals, from abuse. Whereas in my country, you could never file a complaint."

Answer 2

Wow, tough one. There's a difference between political asylum and santuary. I imagine if you can come up with some sort of proof or documentation, you can always approach the state department or embasy regarding your options.
Of course, that's the legal way, and they won't be able to ensure anything and who know's what kind of priority it might get
I suppose you could do that in concert with always applying for a work visa. Or if there is someway to "create" a different reason as to why she is here and why she should stay.
I know marriage is a sticky situation regarding illegals, especially now days with the temperment in America.
You could consider a student status, but I don't know what the requirements regarding number of credits or fields of study are.
GL