In a recent article posted by Immigration Impact, describes how essential it is for asylum seekers to remember every detail of the harm and or torture they endured in their home country. “Due to unprecedented backlogs in immigration court and the Asylum office, U.S. officials ask asylum seekers to describe details about the harms they suffered in their home countries years after they occurred. They must provide details about traumatic incidents such as beatings, arrests, detention, and death threats”. For many who come to the United States, the travel alone to this country may be traumatic, it is unfathomable to think that they should remember every bit of detail of the persecution or harm they were going through in their country.
Sometimes, officers ask details that every person may not recall, for example where a beating may have occurred, what the exact time was, etc. It is bizarre to think a person who is undergoing so much would remember these kinds of details. Yet again, for immigration, if the individual does not recall this they may assume their stories are not real.
Now that the country is undergoing immigration reforms, it is important they address the asylum laws on the assumptions about memory; people who are being persecuted and tortured have already too many things to worry and think about, details are the last thing they think of when running away to save their lives.
Leave a comment!