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The Obama administration broke with its predecessor last week when it filed a new legal brief in an asylum case for a survivor of domestic violence. Opening a narrow pathway, the shift in immigration law stated that battered women may be eligible for entry into the United States if their particular case illustrates that the abuse took place in a country where it was tolerated and where adequate legal protection was not provided by government institutions. The Obama administration put forth the new policy in the ongoing request for asylum made by an unidentified Mexican woman known only by the initials L.R. Despite suffering multiple rapes, threats and an attempt on her life by her attacker, the woman had her claim denied in 2006 when the Bush administration refused to view abused women as part of a persecuted group allowed safe passage in the country under law. Though there has been a shift in policy, L.R. and other foreign women like her have not yet been granted asylum under it. The legal briefing also makes no special provision for women fleeing from genital mutilation.

GUEST: Maria Eugenia Solis Garcia, a human rights attorney based in Guatemala