House panel approves asylum bill for homeschoolers

Erin Kelly | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill Wednesday that would allow people to seek asylum in the USA if they are persecuted by their governments for homeschooling their children. At the same time, the bill would make it tougher for children fleeing gang and drug violence in Central America to gain refuge here.

"Shouldn't children who are fleeing child abuse and violence be afforded the same protection as a child who is denied homeschooling?" said Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, D-Ill. "If we're going to have this unprecedented carve-out for homeschooling, we should put at the same level children fleeing abuse, rape, gangs and murder."

The Asylum Reform and Border Protection Act, sponsored by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, would make it more difficult overall for refugees to win their asylum cases, while opening a category of relief for families who live in countries that outlaw homeschooling. The bill would allow up to 500 grants of asylum per year to families fleeing persecution for homeschooling their children.

Supporters of the bill point to cases in Europe where parents have faced fines and imprisonment for refusing to send their children to schools outside the home.

"No one should be forced to flee their homeland in order to homeschool," said Michael Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association. "But that is what ... families have had to do in order to escape crushing fines, criminal penalties and even the seizure of their children in countries like Germany and Sweden."

Gutiérrez said he does not object to the provision in Chaffetz's bill but thinks it's unfair to help homeschool families without aiding children fleeing drug and gang violence and abuse in countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Unaccompanied children from those three nations flooded across the Southwest border into Texas last year.

"Isn't fearing for your life at least equal to fearing persecution because of homeschooling?" he said. He offered an unsuccessful amendment that would have offered asylum to children fleeing violence in their home countries.

Rep. Raúl Labrador, R-Idaho, said asylum has always been reserved for refugees persecuted by their governments.

"Asylum law is not there to protect crime victims, it is there to protect those persecuted by government," Labrador said.

If the law was changed to allow victims of crime-ridden nations to gain asylum, the USA would be unable to absorb the millions of refugees who would flee from countries where gangs run rampant, Chaffetz said.

Under law, asylum is offered to refugees who can show they have been persecuted because of their race, religion, nationality, political beliefs or membership in a particular social group. There is a special juvenile immigrant status program that allows children to seek asylum in the USA if they can show they have been abused, neglected or abandoned.

Chaffetz's bill would make it more difficult for refugees to prove a "credible fear of persecution" to gain asylum in the USA. It would bar taxpayer funds from being used to pay for attorneys to represent children as they seek asylum in immigration court.

The bill would give the Department of Homeland Security the power to make refugees wait in other "safe countries" such as Mexico while applying for asylum in the USA.

"Congressman Chaffetz's bill ...closes loopholes in our immigration system that enable false asylum claims and ends many of the Obama administration's policies that encourage illegal immigration," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.

The bill is part of a package of four immigration enforcement bills taken up by the committee this year. Legislation approved by the panel this month would speed the return of Central American children to their home countries and require employers to use an electronic federal database to ensure they hire people eligible to work in the USA.

"These bills are a conscious, premeditated attack against millions of American families and a direct blow at the heart of the Latino community," said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, a deputy vice president at the National Council of La Raza.







