Asylum will be available to foreign victims of domestic violence who show 1. that domestic violence is socially acceptable in their own country such that safety would always elude them there and 2. that their social standing in their own country is inferior to their abuser’s.

Re-consideration of standing policy is prompted under the new administration by the application for asylum of a Mexican woman who was beaten, raped and imprisoned by a man who set her bed on fire while she was in it.

It remains a government concern that this new protected class of asylum applicants not “open the floodgates”.

Read more in this New York Times editorial: Asylum for Battered Women and this New York Times article: New Policy Permits Asylum for Battered Women.