Fiadjoe's Asylum Effects

Superior Essays
The U.S. recently has faced tremendous pressure to assist in the alleviation efforts of Trokosi, along with the detrimental effects it imposes on its victims, as they could provide asylum for those escaping enslavement in Ghana. Some politicians refuse to approach the issue of Trokosi because of the fear of insulting or offending West African culture and creating racial or cultural controversy, with the imposition of outside imperialistic reigns, that some may argue as ethnocentric. The Refugee Act of 1980 allows individuals to apply for U.S. asylum if they cannot to return to a country due to “persecution, or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular group or political opinion.” …show more content…
Fiadjoe served as a slave for her father, a priest, since the age of seven, despite an eleven-year relief period, enduring various forms of violence, sexual abuse, and forced labor. The Immigration Police detained Fiadjoe once she entered the U.S. under an alias and sent her to a Pennsylvania Prison, where she awaited trial for her pending asylum application. Instead, the U.S., including the Immigration Judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals, denied her asylum in 2002, claiming that her emotional, inconsistent, and unclear testimony did not meet the Real Act’s standards, and concluded that she ultimately lied about the abuse she claimed to endure. They refused to consider important, affective factors, such as that she did not speak English well andendured emotional trauma throughout this process, including insensitive questioning at trial. The court ultimately ruled that it “will not find that a Trokosi slave constitutes a particular social group, insofar as it is rather a miniscule part of the general population of Ghana,” referring to this practice as rather a “cult.” However, this statement violates U.S. asylum law, in which the harm itself, not the number of people inflicted by the harm, must base the rulings. The courts also denied further motions filed by Fiadjoe in 2003 and 2004 to …show more content…
Therefore, institutional forces must conduct efforts that ultimately prevent and eliminate individuals’ susceptibility of becoming a Trokosi within these systems, as well as ones that combat the oppressive practices themselves with the replacement of lawful and humane approaches to facilitate debt and crimes committed. There must be easy access to rehabilitation services designated to help nurture former Trokosi back into society, along with other opportunities to acquire an education and employment, in order to decrease the damaging effects of Trokosi stigmatization and these women’s chances of being reenslaved. This ultimately may also help reduce the likelihood of future generations of women becoming enslaved through the passing of this knowledge because “when people can recognize the trap of bondage, know their rights as citizens, understand the strength of their community, and find new ways to earn their living,” they are less vulnerable to slavery.” Ultimate liberation and termination of Trokosi, along with other slave systems, involves “a process, and not an event.” This process remains vital

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    Ships coming from Africa carried people captured against their will and turned them into a commodity to be bought and sold. Subjected to traumatic experiences of brutality, these people experienced the gravest of inhumane conditions as slaves. Random beatings and physical torture occur at the whim of their new masters. Food and water are a luxury reserved for higher social classes, slaves being permitted only the minimum required to sustain life. Chains, iron bars, and pistols are tool to render them virtually powerless and enforce their bondage.…

    • 1679 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    What the Meaning of the Word “Is” Is. Trevor Getz’s and Liz Clarke’s Abina and the Important Men takes place along the Gold Coast of Africa in the late 1870’s after the proscription of slavery in the British colonies. This graphic novel predominantly follows a court case in which the titular character Abina Mansah accuses Quamina Eddo of subjecting her to slavery. Through a misrepresentation of slavery and a misplaced sense of personhood, the court rules Eddo not guilty of the accusation of slavery. This decision not only exemplifies the era’s complacence with oppression, but also the ethically corrupted motivations underpinning British imperialism that would later influence racist policies in other Western countries and promote a false understanding genetics.…

    • 878 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Taking place in Haiti, restavecs are slave children who are not paid and do not attend school. This phenomenon is a reintroduced form of slavery that takes place to this day. Children are mistreated most of the time, sleeping in the kitchen on rags or receiving brutal beatings by those who they are “owned” by and also the police. Often timed the reason a child is given up to become a restavec is because the family of…

    • 1225 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Annotation proofread entire document. Knizet discusses why the 3rd circuit court in Philadelphia rejected an asylum case similar to one accepted by the 9th circuit court in San Francisco. She looks at how their decisions relate to definitions and purpose of the Refugee Act and past Supreme court cases in order to determine which standard is right. With an analytical and qualitative approach, Knizet compares Sael v. Ashcroft with Lie v. Ashcroft.…

    • 554 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    As a female slave, horrific threats came on a daily basis. The whites that were in control were able to assault, rape, and abuse the women in which they owned with little to no consequences. In the state of Missouri the rape of a slave was considered a mere trespass (“The Slave” 1). Along with the hardships of family separation and physical strain, slave women and families also had to cope with the stigma of sexual assault and abuse (Jacobs 214-215). Women who were meant to be the head of household while their husbands or fathers were separated from them were subject to both physical and mental abuse.…

    • 1718 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Manumission is not the end of the struggle for the enslaved. They are left without identity or community. They must rise above the degradation and oppression to find solidarity and change. The chapter from Patterson’s book, Slavery and Social Death, focused on the complexity of manumission and how the release from slavery was executed in many traditions and cultures.…

    • 1102 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Goncalves-Peña writes about how courts have responded to variety of political asylum cases relating to gang threats in Central America. Specifically, she looks at how courts have interpreted the meanings and boundaries of political asylum. The article is analytical and references refugee law to define refugee and accounts of asylum. The article also looks at court cases, including INS v. Elias, Desir v. Ilchert, Zayas-Marini v. INS, and Osorio v. INS.…

    • 466 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The advent of slavery has been deeply rooted in American history for a long time. From the time African slaves were set foot in Virginia, the North American colony of Jamestown in 1619, slavery has been utilized to establish the economic foundations of the American nation. The African slaves were perceived as a cheaper source of labour in comparison to the poorer Europeans who were procured as indentured servants. Since the indentured servants were later to earn their freedom, African slaves were highly preferred for their lifetime service or till their master set them free.…

    • 553 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ashley Arizabal Mr. Smith AP Language and Comp. 8 August 2017 Text Connections to the Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl 1. TEXT-TO-SELF One way I relate to this book is through parts of Jacobs’ personality. For example, she showed much creativity in her plan to get her children sent to the North, which was to pretend to have gone to the North herself by hiding in a friend’s home. She even made her escape more believable by asking friends in New York and Philadelphia to send letters to her grandmother. Having art as one of my passions as well as considering myself to be an ingenuitive person, I believe myself to be creative like her.…

    • 728 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout world history, countless groups of people from different ethnicities and cultures have befallen to the trap of institutionalized slavery. From the beginnings of colonial America, European settlers have enslaved both the indigenous people and also Africans. When the general subject of slavery is discussed, people assume this refers to the 13 million Africans that were transported to the America, as part of the “Triangular Slave Trade” (Ojibwa). The massive, historical representation of African slaves disregards many other racial groups that were subjected to this dehumanizing treatment. Although, Africans did endure the harsh enslavement by their European owners for approximately 300 years, slavery in America began long before this.…

    • 1539 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Human Trafficking In Texas

    • 1178 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Human trafficking can be classified into different types of trafficking such as, sex trafficking, labor trafficking and organ trafficking. Sex trafficking and labor trafficking are to be the most popular types of trafficking in the United States. In this research paper, I will be covering the different aspects of human trafficking or modern day slavery in ways of legal and non-legal response. I will also be responding on how effective the legal system is in regards of human trafficking. In Texas alone, the majority of the victims identified are actually our own citizens.…

    • 1178 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dbq Human Trafficking

    • 765 Words
    • 4 Pages

    When selling human beings, profits multiply because overhead is low as the same person recycles to numerous clients. The sad fact is trafficking brings economic success to the con-men that import and export abductees across the nations. Furthermore, modern slave trade largely goes unnoticed due to its movement in many geographical regions and multiracial victims versus the singular African face of the 19th century (Source E).The criminal justice system is weak and the executive director of CAST says, “Definitions are too restrictive or open to wide interpretation” (Source F). For example, victims must face the offender in an open forum to obtain aid for housing, food or citizenship. Due to the fear involved in proving hardship against the pimps, the women and children involved often choose to abandon taking part in criminal investigations.…

    • 765 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    can be challenging in many ways to complete. There is also only a limited number of T Visa’s given per year, therefore not all victims are guaranteed to receive one (Department of Homeland Security, 2014). Social Policy Critique The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 was signed into law on October 28, 2000 by President Bill Clinton in an effort to fight against trafficking in persons, of all types; forced enslavement and slavery, the sex trade,.…

    • 874 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    An auctioneer shouts across a slum. “Does anybody need a digger? This is a digger, a big strong man, he’ll dig,” (#3).Those are the words of a human trafficker taking away someone’s freedom away. Many of Nigerian refugees are being sold against their very own will in auctions in the northern African country known as Libya. Libya is very well-known country to hold slave auctions and many of them are coming from the Libyan capital, Tripoli.…

    • 629 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    “Even after traffickers are taken into custody, survivors may still worry about threats from criminal affiliates to their family and friends back home” (Clay), explaining to the large extent of how slaveholders had a strong psychologically hold on their slaves, enough to create fear even after being locked up. Slaveholder’s manipulation not only created fear, but left women “mentally unstable” (Dorsey) and unable to hold jobs. Some women may have escaped slavery, but the damaging effects last longer than women expect, making their readjustment to a life outside of slavery…

    • 1435 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays