Immigration Article of the Day: Affidavits Are Forever: Public Charge, Domestic Violence, and the Enforceability of Immigration Law's Affidavit of Support by Veronica Thronson
Affidavits Are Forever: Public Charge, Domestic Violence, and the Enforceability of Immigration Law's Affidavit of Support by Veronica Thronson, 41 Yale Law & Policy Review 69 (2022)
Abstract
Part I of this Article provides a brief background on the central role that family relationships play in the immigration system, examining family-sponsored immigration and the power dynamics that it creates within families. It also explores the deep roots of public charge determinations in the context of family immigration. Part II investigates the affidavit of support as currently mandated in immigration law. Part III describes the enforceability issues that arise around affidavits of support, including jurisdictional concerns, statutory and regulatory termination events, and the rejection of contract and equitable claims to end obligations of support brought by sponsors. This examination highlights the ways in which the law fails to acknowledge and ameliorate the cruelty that results when sponsors experience domestic abuse at the hands of the sponsored immigrant they are required to support. While litigation on the issue of affidavits of support generally has focused on enforceability of the affidavit by the immigrant against the sponsor, in some instances, the sponsor has sought to end support when she has been abused by the immigrant she sponsored. In such instances, the law is inadequate to provide her relief, and instead forces the woman to continue supporting her abuser. Part IV contrasts the absence of domestic violence considerations in the affidavit of support context with reforms in other areas of immigration law that address the ways in which immigration law can serve as a tool of power and control for abusers. These provisions of immigration law related to abuse usually provide immigration remedies to ameliorate the power that immigration law gives to abusive sponsors. When the situation is reversed and the sponsor is the person being abused, immigration relief is irrelevant (the sponsor is a U.S. citizen or LPR), but there is no corresponding relief from the immigration law provisions mandating financial support. As such, immigration law can cause severe and lasting harm to U.S. citizens and LPRs. Finally, Part V suggests simple reforms to bring the regulation and enforcement of affidavits of support in line with provisions that protect victims of domestic violence in immigration law.
