Immigration

THIS PERSON ASKED FOR SPECIFIC ARTICLES THAT DEFINE EXTREME CRUELTY - PROBABLY WON’T BE APPROPRIATE FOR EVERY EMAILER - Please know that WomensLaw strongly discourages anyone from filing for any type of immigration relief on their own without an experienced immigration attorney. An immigration lawyer I contacted to ask for information also strongly encourages you to get a lawyer to represent you and specifically said: “not all service centers understand the extreme cruelty standard for conditional residence waivers, so having an advocate may mean the difference between grant and denial.” So, the first thing I want to do is to refer you to links for lawyers in STATE and some that are national organizations that you may want to contact to find one that specializes in VAWA: LINK That said, there are resources on the ASISTAhelp.org website, particularly in the Clearinghouse in the VAWA section that may be instructive. In particular, the language in the regulations at 8 CFR 204.2(c)(vi) with respect to VAWA self-petitions, 8 CFR 216.5(e)(3)(i) for I-751 waivers. Also, this article by Sally Kinoshita may be another resource: http://www.asistahelp.org/documents/filelibrary/Fall_2006_Newsletter__78… As you can see, the regulatory definition is pretty short, but in fact, it is intended to be a broad and flexible definition of abuse (see Sally’s article).

I also did some research on the Internet - I didn’t find any definitions from USCIS but I did find a few articles that may be useful that discuss extreme cruelty although I don’t know if they specifically address extreme cruelty in relation to removal of conditions, as you have asked about. Here is what I found - please know that WomensLaw has no affiliation with any of these organizations and cannot vouch for the information contained in them. This article from American University purports to give a definition of extreme cruelty from the Department of Homeland Security on the first page - you can see it here: http://niwaplibrary.wcl.american.edu/reference/additional-materials/mate… I also found this article from American University that discusses the same topic: http://niwaplibrary.wcl.american.edu/reference/additional-materials/mate… Lastly, I found what appears to be a training for attorneys or advocates helping victims to prove extreme cruelty that gives a checklist with examples that you may want to look at: http://www.nifvi.org/pdf/ShowingExtremeCrueltyVAWAI-751WaiverApp.pdf Also, here is the information on VAWA from our website in case it is useful:LINK