Speakout: Asylum seekers here will be hurt, too

Ernest Duff

Published July 31, 2006 at midnight

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Earlier this month, Colorado passed some of the most restrictive immigration legislation in the country, denying most state services to any adult who cannot prove legal status. This legislation has the potential to affect the lives of an oft-overlooked immigrant group: asylum seekers, many of whom have survived torture in their home countries.

These immigrants take refuge in the United States, where they reveal themselves to the immigration system and apply for political asylum, a process that can take a very long time. As the executive director of the Rocky Mountain Survivors Center, I see how the cyclical nature of anti-immigration sentiment has a ripple effect on some of the world's most vulnerable people, especially during times of difficulty.

At the center, we serve torture survivors who come to this country from conflict zones around the globe. Most have been psychologically, physically and/or sexually tortured, through methods that are unfortunately common practices in their home countries. Survivors of torture have had their dignity stripped, have lost their sense of humanity because other human beings have done unspeakable things to them, and have become mere shells of who they once were. Yet they manage to survive, leave their countries and come to America in search of a safe haven. At our center, we help survivors, their family members and their communities come to grips with all they have endured. We help them engage in rehabilitation and find a sense of dignity and empowerment. The goal is to help them become productive citizens of this country or their own, if and when they go back.

Survivors of torture represent a small but significant number of immigrants in Colorado. Under new legislation, immigrants who are in the process of applying for political asylum will face the same challenges as other undocumented "illegals." Aside from letters from the immigration system or the courts, asylum seekers have little available to them to prove their legal status, or to verify that they are in the process of seeking asylum.

Many social service workers, untrained in how to work with asylum seekers, will not know how to handle the distinct needs of this group. As a result, an asylum seeker who might also be a torture survivor could very well be cut off from support and services that could help him or her succeed in resettlement. It's important to remember that most asylum seekers come to this country not to freeload, but to survive, feed their families and try to create hope for their children.

At this moment in our nation's history, what do we have to teach survivors about hope? Terror, fear and doom are the watchwords of the day. Our children are not guaranteed a safe and secure future. We have sunk billions of taxpayer dollars into the war on terror, chasing our elusive enemy wherever possible, and killing thousands of innocent civilians in the process.

Despite occasionally rosy forecasts from Washington, we have seen our economy falter, as the costs of war drain our wallets daily at the pump and elsewhere. Now we see new specters on the horizon, with North Korea engaging in nuclear saber rattling, and Iran openly showing contempt for our attempts to corral their nuclear program. How many fronts are we willing to fight on, and how many troops and funds will be needed, and for how long?

And what message are we sending about torture itself, when our administration condones its use under some circumstances? Our nation, which has led the international movement against torture since the end of World War II, has now made provisions for its use in the war on terror. Yet the Supreme Court has just affirmed that we cannot operate outside the Geneva Convention restrictions on how to treat enemy combatants and prisoners of war, no matter how ruthless we may believe them to be.

What are we showing torture survivors about America's willingness to help those in need? Instead of working hard to change the tenor of our times - to move from waging war to seeking peace - we have entered yet another realm of fear, misunderstanding and intolerance. We have resolved to tighten our borders and keep "them" out - to turn our backs on the needs of our fellow "illegal" human beings.

This demonizing of immigrants is nothing new. Past generations of Americans have done the same to past generations of newcomers, particularly when times were hard.

Asylum seekers, many of whom have already survived the worst that human beings can perpetrate on others, deserve to be heard, to be let in, and to find the safety and security that has eluded them for so long.

Ernest Duff is the executive director of the Rocky Mountain Survivors Center.

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