Posted on 03/09/2005 8:38:39 PM PST by Lorianne
Men whose wives were forcibly sterilised under China's coercive population control policies are entitled to political asylum in the US, the federal appeals court in San Francisco has ruled. The ruling could greatly increase the number of people able to stay in the US because of persecution under China's population policies.
"Involuntary sterilisation irrevocably strips persons of one of the important liberties we possess as humans: our reproductive freedom," Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote on behalf of the panel of three.
"Therefore, one who has suffered involuntary sterilisation, either directly or because of the sterilisation of a spouse, is entitled [without having to prove anything else, to refuge in this country]."
Tuesday's ruling was the latest by the court dealing with the legal consequences of China's population policies.
From 1981 China enforced a strict policy limiting families to one child. Enforced abortion, sterilisation and birth control devices became widely publicised features of the policy.
In 1996 Congress passed a bill granting refugee status to up to 1,000 people a year who could prove that their country's population control policies had coerced them.
Susan Greenhalgh, an expert on China's population policies at the University of California, Irvine, said that since then the bureau of citizenship and immigration services (formerly the immigration and naturalisation service) had been "flooded" with asylum claims, and there had been "little consistency" in the resolution of the cases
The latest ruling was particularly unusual because it was the husband who applied for asylum, she said.
The plaintiff in the case, Quili Qu, came to the US in 1997 on a visa valid for a businessman. In 2001 he applied for asylum. His wife is still in China. Mr Qu said that he and his wife had married in 1978. They were denied a permit to have a child.
When his wife became pregnant she fled to the countryside to avoid a forced abortion. She gave birth in 1979 and left the baby with her mother.
Three years later they received a birth permit. The wife waited a few months and then lied to officials, saying she had just become pregnant.
When they discovered that the child was five, not one, "the Chinese bureaucrats became enraged", the court said.
In 1985, while Mr Qu was at work, a neighbourhood committee found Mrs Qu, "bound her, and took her to a hospital", where she was involuntarily sterilised.
Guess that means the rate of forced sterilization is going to go up. If that is the ticket to get here, I'm sure someone can find a doctor to oblige with the operation and certify that it was forced.
This is also a great way to get deep cover operatives and spies into the U.S. Simply claim that an agent was "involuntarily sterizised" and you get two U.S. hating agents into this country at the same time.
By all means, bring more people here. I mean there aren't enough as it is.
This is silly. We shouldn't be granting asylum for this. Living here doesn't even help the couple reproductive-wise --the wife can't become unsterilized.
Talk about understatement! Increase by what number? Like 1 billion?
Come on, China is smaller than the US and has 4 times as many people. I say we can easily take 200-300 million of those fellas
China isn't that much smaller than America.
LOL
SIGH
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