The Immigration Law Center was founded in 1990 by Mimi Yam Schooley. As there are several universities and many hospitals in our immediate area (New Orleans), our principal practice is in providing immigration law services for professional people.
Chinese Refugee Heard in N.O. Court - One of Lucky Few
By JOAN TREADWAY Staff writer Times Picayune 11/6/93
The outpouring of public sympathy triggered by media coverage of smuggled Chinese refugees staggering ashore alter their ship ran aground off New York City last June has not been matched by a warm reception from federal authorities.
Political asylum is rarely being granted to any of the nearly 300 passengers of the Golden Venture. but in a New Orleans court Friday A woman became one of the chosen few.
Part of her success came from the strength of her claim: She testified her husband died after authorities refused him medical services as a punishment for violating China's family planning program.
"Happy," she said, pointing to her heart, as she learned of the decision.
Of the 284 passengers aboard the Golden Venture, 259 eventually asked for asylum, but as of Oct. 25, only 23 applications had been approved while 204 had been denied and 32 were pending, said Duke ;Austin, a Washington spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
All of those who were denied asylum will be deported, after appeals have run their course, Austin said.
He denied claims by some defense lawyers that people from the well-publicized event are being treated less fairly than other "boat people" because President Clinton wanted to signal his resolve to crack down on smuggling.
Six passengers drowned trying to swim from the grounded Golden Venture. Another 14 were juveniles and were released to social agencies or relatives. Five eluded immigration agents and have not been found.
Ninety percent of those seeking asylum based their claims on persecution arising from the Chinese government's coercive family planning policy, including some of the men, who said they were beaten or jailed for having more than one child.
Immigration Service attorneys apparently are appealing some cases in which immigration judges granted asylum to Gold Venture people, Austin said. Of the 23 who got asylum, 12 are still detained, presumably because of the appeals, he said.
New York jails could not hold all the undocumented foreigners while the U.S. government decided what to do with them.
So they were sent to other states, including Louisiana, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Virginia. All 23 female passengers were sent to Orleans Parish prison, and four of them were later sent on to Hancock County Jail in Pass Christian, Miss.
The woman granted asylum Friday was the first female passenger to gain this status, said her attorney, Mimi Schooley. Two Chinese women who fled earlier this year and arrived in the United States through Mexico were granted asylum in New Orleans Thursday.
Immigration officials said about eight others in the area still await hearings.
The woman who was awarded asylum Friday by Judge David Ayala, an immigration judge from Harlingen, Texas, is a 28year old who asked that her name not be made public.
She said she fears she will be deported if the U.S. attorney involved decides to appeal Ayala's decision within 10 days. And even if she is able to remain in the United States, she worries that Chinese authorities will learn her name and take revenge on her family in the province of Fujian.
"The right to bodily integrity and the right to procreate are universally recognized as fundamental human rights," Ayala said, in making his decision in a small courtroom in the federal building on Loyola Avenue.
The woman said officials in her village insisted on sterilizing her, after she had her second son late in 1985. She and her husband Buddhists who consider children "a gift from God" hid in a cave for several days.
Learning that authorities were threatening to sterilize one of her teenage cousins in her stead, the woman presented herself to officials and was subjected to sterilization.
When her husband later became ill with kidney problems, the village clinic refused treatment, as punishment for his having had two children. In' November 1987, he died of his illness, his widow said, bowing her head in pain at the memory.
For a while, she struggled on alone, trying to raise enough food on their small plot of land to feed her children.
She again incurred official wrath by helping her young cousin get medical assistance to reverse the sterilization procedure she had been forced to undergo.
Fearing imprisonment and torture, the woman again went into hiding, and then left on the Golden Venture last spring. Her children remain in China.
She had no idea where she was as the ship ran aground off New York, ending months of confinement in the crowded hold.
"There was a thud, then people were jumping overboard," she said. She jumped, too, and swam toward shore, pausing to help drag along a male passenger.
A doctor in a New York hospital where she was taken told her she was in the United States.
Her relief turned to stunned , disbelief when she was then confined in the first of a series of prisons.
"I'm glad I survived it all and that I made it to America," she said.
But as of late Friday, the woman was still in custody due to administrative procedures, her lawyer said.
Assuming the immigration service does not move to reverse her asylum, the woman said hopes to begin a new life with relatives in another part of the United States. ( Return )
Joan Treadway, Staff writer, The Times-Picayune 1/20/94 Page Metro-1
A Chinese woman who fled her home land on a smugglers ship that ran aground off New York City won asylum in New Orleans Wednesday on the claim that she was forced to undergo an abortion after criticizing her government's population policy.
The woman was one of about 260 passengers from the Golden Venture who asked for political asylum. Many of them claimed that they had been harshly treated because they spoke against China's one-child policy or in favor of democracy, said Cindi L. Dresdner, an attorney with the Catholic Legal Immigration Network in New York. Most are being denied asylum, she said. More than 200 requests have been denied with most being appealed, officials said.
The woman's attorney, Mimi Schooley, argued that she had received severe treatment from officials in her village in Fujian ProvinceÑincluding denial of permission to marry and forced abortionÑall due to her outspokenness.
At least 10 times in the 1980s, when she was a teenager, she had confronted village officials, speaking against the one-child policy, Schooley said. The woman declined to be identified for fear of reprisals against relatives.
Three years ago, the woman testified, "The government officials came to my house, arrested me and took me to the village hospital for a physical exam.
"When it was confirmed that I was (three months) pregnant, they forcibly aborted my unborn child on the spot.... I told them they have no right to abort my baby, but I was completely helpless on the operation table. I cried, protested and pleaded with them but they killed my child anyway. I was very sick and depressed for a long time after the abortion."
She said she decided "that the only way to have any freedom and human rights was to leave the country." So her family arranged for her passage on the Golden Venture, she said.
Immigration Judge David Ayala said he found the woman's testimony "credible" and granted her asylum based on her having faced persecution because of her political opinion. When the government's 10-day period for appeals runs out, the woman expects to be freed from Orleans Parish Prison, where she has been held for months along with others from the same ship, which ran aground last June 6. She then plans to join relatives in New York, and to try to bring to America her fiance and the 1-year old son they were able to have despite government harassment, she said. If she makes it through the appeals process, asylum would mean she could stay in this country and apply for citizenship.
Before being returned to jail, the woman, now 25, said that part of the reason for her opposition to the Chinese government's policy is based on her religion, Buddhism. But the immediate impetus for her series of protests was that she saw her mother become ill after officials forcibly sterilized her. She did not know the extent of the repercussions she would have to face for speaking out, she said. Of the 23 Chinese women from the Golden Venture who were sent to New Orleans because of crowding in New York jails, four have been granted asylum, said Russ Bergeron, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. ( Return )
by JOAN TREADWAY, Staff writer
Eighteen Chinese women who were aboard a smugglers' ship that ran aground off New York one year ago today still languish in Orleans Parish Prison, despondent and fearful of being deported.
"We feel devastated that we've been imprisoned so long," a writer of the group of detainees recently wrote to Kristi Hackney, area resident who was raised Asia and has been giving the women moral support.
"We plead with all our hearts at you will not return us to face terrible end in China," the writer added in an open message the public.
When their vessel, the Golden Venture, snagged on a sandbar, six people drowned trying to swim to land. It was a widely publicized incident that included photographs of drenched survivors staggering ashore, where they were promptly apprehended by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. New York's jails could not hold the sudden influx of nearly 300 newcomers, many of whom later claimed they were fleeing their homeland because of a lack of freedom or because they disagreed with its one-child-per family policy.
The passengers were sent in groups to Pennsylvania, Virginia and Louisiana. Of the 23 detainees who came to New Orleans, five have been released, said Russ Bergeron, a spokesman for the district office of the immigration service Four were granted political asylum in the United States and the fifth was admitted to Costa Rica as a refugee. He said that among the 18 women still detained, 16 have been found to be deportable after hearings before an immigration judge. One won asylum, but the Justice Department is appealing the case, and another woman has not yet had an initial hearing because her case was postponed.
Mimi Schooley, a local Chinese American lawyer, already has won asylum for two women from the shipÑone on the basis that she was forced to undergo an abortion after criticizing her government's population policy. Now, Schooley is trying legal maneuvers to also win the right to stay in America for four of the 16 women who were judged to be deportable.
She accepted their cases after an immigration judge had denied their initial request for asylum.
An immigration appeals board has sided with the judge in three of the cases, while the fourth is pending, she said. She plans to take the cases denied by the board into federal court. Nationwide, no one from the Golden Venture has reached the point in the legal system where he or she is facing immediate deportation, said Duke Austin, a spokesman for the Washington office of the immigration service. Those whose cases are not yet decided are being detained, because U.S. law dictates this for people in "exclusion" proceedings, meaning they were caught before they entered the country, he said. If they run out of legal options, there is nothing to prevent the Chinese people from the Golden Venture or any other ship from being deported, he said. About 85 Chinese people were deported two weeks ago, he said.
Schooley said her clients who are still detained are gripped with fear about the possibility of being deported. Even the two women she got released fear making trips back to China to get the children they left behind, she said, because they believe they will be imprisoned if Chinese government officials discover they sought and won asylum in America.
The two women have moved to the Northeast, where they have relatives. The one who was forced to have an abortion was released from Orleans Parish Prison in late April, Schooley said. She is now a seamstress in New York. The other woman has been free a longer time. She won asylum in November, after testifying that her husband died because Chinese authorities refused him medical services as a punishment for violating China's family planning program. She works in a restaurant in New Jersey. The women are not using their real names because they fear the smugglers who brought them to America's doorstep, Schooley said. She believes the women had paid a portion of the usual fee, which ranges from $20,000 to $30,000, and planned to make arrangements to pay the rest after their arrival. ( Return )
Tina Soong The Times Picayune 12/8/94 p. A2
Mimi Yam Schooley, an Asian American lawyer in private practice, recently lectured on "Women and Law" at a seminar sponsored by the New Orleans chapter of the Organization of Chinese American Women.
Educated in Hong Kong and the United States. Schooley finished high school in Hong Kong and earned a degree in special education from Middle Tennessee State University. Before attending law school, she was a school principal for six years in Hong Kong.
She received her law degree in 1987 from the Tulane University Law School and has been in private practice since then.
"Women in today's world often have the double responsibilities of working and homemaking. Most working women still take the major share of housework and child rearing. They try to strike a balance between home and career," said Schooley, who is also legal counsel for the Asian/Pacific American Society.
"Husband and wife are equal partners," she said, noting that under Louisiana law, a full-time homemaker is entitled to half of the community property, or property accumulated or earned after marriage. Separate property, the property either spouse accumulated before marriage, does not need to be shared.
"Women should watch out for their own interests, keep documents and records, and know where the assets are," she said.
Schooley also emphasized the importance of writing a will as a way to protect one's family, children and loved ones.
"If you have young children, specify in the will the legal guardian of the children and the trustee of the estate before the children reach maturity. Because of the conflict of interests, it. may be better that, the guardian and the trustee are not the same person," Schooley said.
In Louisiana, if a person dies without a will, half of the estate goes to the spouse and half to the children, she said.
A wife should talk with her husband about his will, find out the beneficiaries of his insurance policies, keep records and have access to the couple's assets, Schooley said.
"A living will provides for a medical situation, living someone whom you trust the power to decide for you when you are not capable of making the decision of life and death when the quality of life is no longer there," she said.( Return )
Please send reactions, comments, and advice to:
Mimi Schooley schooley@new-orleans.neosoft.comThis Page Last Updated:Fri, Jan 6, 1995