NIWAP’s comment provide legislative history and social science evidence based research to support USCIS’s formal implementation in the VAWA self-petitioning chapters of the USCIS Policy Manual of virtually all of the VAWA statutory reforms that were included in VAWA 2000, VAWA 2005 and VAWA 2013 that became law after the VAWA self-petitioning regulations were issued in 1996. The first section of these comments discusses these issued. In reviewing the policy manual we also identified a few areas in which the policy manual does not implement or does not fully implement VAWA statutes and in one case imposes a policy that is inconsistent with VAWA’s goals, legislative history, and the reasoning of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. The areas of improvement NIWAP suggests in these comment focus largely on four important issues for which we seek improvements in the Policy Manual’s approach:
— We appreciate that USCIS adopted the 7th Circuit’s opinion in Arguijo and has applied it nationally ensuring that divorce will not cut of abused stepchildren from VAWA self-petitioning and NIWAP requests and provides the legal and social science support for treating abused stepchildren whose biological parent dies identically instead of forcing abused stepchildren to maintain an ongoing relationship with their abusive stepparent after the death of their biological parent in order to self-petition;
— We propose policy manual revisions that do not treat crimes committed by victims related to the battering or extreme cruelty they suffered as aggravated felonies barring them permanently from self-petitioning and forcing them into the U visa backlog as their only immigration option. This approach cuts victims off from the domestic violence victim waiver that Congress created to help victims with convictions from pleas they took in domestic violence criminal cases where they had acted in self-defense or when they stole baby food when fleeing their abuser and ended up with a one year suspended sentence for the theft which is an aggravated felony under U.S. immigration laws;
–Remarriage: Congress in VAWA 2000 revised VAWA statutes and explained in legislative history that their intent to ensure that remarriage of VAWA self-petitioners would not impact a filed self-petition reflecting an understanding of how remarriage to a non-abusive partner can help victims heal and can play a role in improving victim safety; and
–Naturalization: In VAWA 2000 Congress amended the naturalization statute to allow spouses of U.S. citizens who are battered or subjected to extreme cruelty by their citizen spouse to not have to remain living in an abusive home and remain married to their abused to be able to naturalize in 3 years as opposed to 5 years. This provision was meant to help any abused spouse of a U.S. citizen whether the abuser filed a family-based visa petition or whether the victim filed a self-petition. Implementing policies limited these protections to VAWA self-petitioners, VAWA cancellation and Battered Spouse Waiver applicants, leaving out VAWA suspension of deportation victims and all other battered spouses of U.S. citizens.