The U-Visa provision of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) allows spouses and family members of American citizens to self-petition for US residency when they claim abuse by a spouse, father, stepfather, etc. Passed in the mid 90s, it soon occasioned a tragedy that led directly to the widespread adoption of metal detectors and patdowns in courthouses across the US.

Timothy Blackwell, a Seattle man who married Susana Remerata, a Filipina he met through an overseas matchmaker, was almost immediately abandoned by his new bride, who promptly left him and got knocked up by a local gangbanger (she claimed it was “rape” — but only in divorce court) within a couple weeks of setting foot on US soil. During divorce proceedings, at the advice of a couple Filipina attorneys she met, Susana claimed abuse and filed for residency under the VAWA U visa program, while Mr. Blackwell attempted to have the marriage annulled, claiming he was the victim of an immigration scam. On March 2 1995, the day after after learning that the child Susana was carrying was not his, Timothy Blackwell walked into the King County Courthouse in downtown Seattle with a gun and shot Susanna and her two Filipina attorneys to death. The unborn child died in the shooting as well.

Blackwell, who was spared the death penalty due to sympathetic jurors, is currently serving a life sentence in the Monroe Correctional Facility, near Seattle.

However, in most cases the fraud isn’t so shameless, but rather the result of the rationalization process common to human females.

Recently, while eating at a local Mexican restaurant, I picked up La Raza, a free Spanish language publication distributed in Mexican communities. Although I am not particularly well-versed in Spanish (I took one year of Spanish in high school just to kill time), I can read it passably, and I like to keep an eye on what’s happening around town in various demographic segments.

One article, “Mi hijo apunto de deportado,” (my son is about to be deported) caught my eye, so I decided to take a look.

The article was an advice column written by a local immigration attorney named Marie-Bernadette Higuera, in which a Colombian woman was asking how to help her 17-year-old son, who was facing deportation.

According to the woman, she fled her Colombian husband seven years ago with her two children, and illegally immigrated to the United States. She claims her Colombian husband was abusive, and she couldn’t do anything about it because he’s a policeman. She claims he abused her and their sons sexually, mentally and psychologically, forcing her to illegally immigrate to the US, where she eventually met and married an American man.

Now, she claims her new husband is abusive as well, beating her sons, insulting them and threatening to send them back to their father. This, according to our hapless Colombian victim, has caused her eldest son to develop an anger problem and problems in school. She claims he never had any trouble with the police before, but was recently arrested for giving his girlfriend a smackdown, and has been charged as an adult. Evidently, this is a deportable offense (unlike international child abduction, it seems), and she needs advice fast.

The immigration lawyer responds at some length. First, she tells the woman to get a good criminal defense attorney, because it will be much easier to fight deportation if the kid is found not guilty. Secondly, she suggests asylum, which could be plausible for someone from a country like Colombia, with a civil war. Finally, getting down to the nitty-gritty, she suggests the use of VAWA, which can be used by wives not only on behalf of themselves, but their children or stepchildren as well.

Finally, as a last resort, she gives the woman a big, juicy hint:

su hijo también podría ser eligible para pedir una visa U si su esposo de usted ha cometido algunes crimines en contra de el y si su hijo ha cooperado con la investigacion o prosecucion del crimen.

Your son may also be eligible to petition for a U visa [VAWA Visa] if your husband has committed crimes against him [domestic violence] and he cooperates with the investigation and prosecution.

In other words, if she can find some way get her husband nailed for DV and get her son to testify against the guy (shouldn’t be hard if he’s facing deportation otherwise), she and her children all get to be legal US residents and be a happy family — without that mean old husband (but not without his house, presumably).

And it all would have been occasioned by her son beating the crap out of his girlfriend. Such is the twisted, Kafkaesque state of American law.