Neilson, ‘Homosexual or Female’, 2005
- Category: Literature
- Source: Academic
- Subject: Sexual Orientation/Sexuality, Refugee/Asylum, Gender, Human Rights, LGBT+
- Place: Americas
- Year: 2005
- File: Homosexual or Female
- URL: http://www.immigrationequality.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Neilson-Website-Version-Lesbian-article.pdf
Victoria Neilsen, ‘Homosexual or female – Applying gender-based asylum jurisprudence to lesbian asylum’, 2005 Stanford Law & Policy Review 16 (2), pp 417–444
Abstract
The year 2004 marked the tenth anniversary of former Attorney General Janet Reno’s designation of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) decision In re Toboso-Alfonso as precedent. The BIA held that Toboso-Alfonso could remain in the United States because he would face persecution in his native Cuba on account of his sexual orientation. As a result of the Attorney General’s designation, persecution based on sexual orientation was unequivocally recognized by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and its successor agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as a ground for seeking asylum in the United States. Since then, hundreds, if not thousands, of homosexual foreign nationals have won asylum in the United States upon showing that they suffered past persecution or could demonstrate a well-founded fear of future persecution in their home countries on account of their sexual orientation.
While neither the INS nor its successor agencies within the DHS keeps formal statistics on the basis of asylum grants, it is clear from published cases, non-precedential reported cases, and anecdotal experience that the vast majority of sexual orientation-based asylum grants have been to gay men, not to lesbians.