Policy

The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 (VAWA 2013), combined with the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), was signed into law on March 7, 2013, and have protections for immigrant survivors who have experienced domestic or dating violence, sexual assault, and/or stalking. Survivors have access to deportation relief by […]

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was initially passed into law in 1994 and has subsequently been reauthorized with key enhancements in 2000, 2005, and 2013.  With each reauthorization, VAWA has become more comprehensive in order to improve efforts to address the needs of all individuals experiencing domestic violence, sexual assault, […]

Nonprofit organizations, designated as a 501(c)(3), are able to do some “lobbying” as defined by the IRS, and there are many activities that are actually designated as advocacy which are permissible for nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits are prohibited from any political activity which includes intervention in a political campaign to endorse or […]

DHS requires that you first file a complaint to the supervisor of the local DHS office involved inthe violation. A complaint includes: Names of persons involved, dates, locations, and other details of the violation; and the gravity (including potential lethality) faced by the survivor. Danger to the survivor can increase if […]

This glossary gives definitions for immigration statuses and immigration-related terms. Words that appear in SMALL CAPS are defined elsewhere in the Glossary.

We asked a number of shelters and organizations that work with survivors of domestic and sexual violence to answer a survey. Among the questions, we asked whether service providers had encountered immigrant survivors who had been apprehended by the police and charged with a crime related to the abuse those victims […]

Language identification flashcard in Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Cambodian, Chamorro, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, English, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Hmong, Hungarian, Ilocano, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai, Tongan, Ukranian, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Yiddish. 

As the immigration debate wages on in the United States, researchers, advocates, community organizers, policy makers, and community members alike have taken note of the direct impact that increased immigration enforcement policies have had on the Latin@ community. This is especially evident in the area of domestic violence (DV), where for […]

Since 2011, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in the arrival of Latina immigrant women and their children, primarily from countries in the northern triangle of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras). During the last two years, the U.S. government apprehended more than 150,000 immigrant family units, primarily […]

For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property […]