Asylum Denied: A Refugee’s Struggle for Safety in America
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Background
Published in 2008, Asylum Denied: A Refugee’s Struggle for Safety in America recounts Kenyan political prisioner David Ngaruri Kenney’s life and legal battles through his memories and the memories of his lawyer Philip G. Schrag. The book, an oral history account of Kenney’s life, was compiled using a series of interviews between the two authors. Both Kenney and Schrag heavily edited the text and composed the final manuscript for publishing. The text outlines the struggles of asylum seekers but also suggests that asylum laws should be “less random, more evenhanded, more compassionate, and more just.”1 According to the authors, victims of human rights violations should be treated with the utmost respect and not merely placed in a random system that may or may not be able to assist them.
Summary
Asylum Denied: A Refugee's Struggle for Safety in America is the story of David Ngaruri Kenney, a political activist who launched a successful protest against the Kenya Tea Development Agency’s (KTDA) monopoly over unprocessed tea leaves in 1992, and his attempts to find asylum in the United States from the oppressive regime of Kenyan dictator Daniel Arop Moi. Derived primarily from twelve hours of recorded interviews with his lawyer Philip G. Schrag, Asylum Denied is written as a first-person narrative of Kenney’s experiences, describing, among many things, his rough upbringing with abusive siblings and a mentally unstable mother in rural Kangaita, the formation of his protest against the KTDA, his arrest and torture by Kenyan secret police forces, his escape to the United States on a basketball scholarship through the help of Peace Corps volunteers, his pursuit of higher education in America, and, finally, his legal battle with the United States Justice Department for asylum.
As the story centers on his legal case, Asylum Denied provides an example of the far-reaching implications of Attorney General John Ashcroft’s reforms to the Board of Immigration Appeals following the September 11, 2001 attacks and the ensuing political firestorm over immigration policy, "which he put into place ostensibly to make the board more efficient and to help it reduce its pending backlog of fifty-five thousand appeals…. Henceforth, a single member of the board would consider each appeal initially. If the member found the decision of the immigration judge to be correct and uncontroversial, he or she could affirm it without writing a word."2 After Kenney’s initial appeal under Judge Joan Churchill was denied, his second appeal was reviewed and ultimately denied by only one judge on the Board of Immigration Appeals, Frederick Hess, in a one paragraph summation. Another issue this book discusses is the lottery system. Immigrants can enter a lottery that awards them a visa but this process does not allow for issues that may arise with applicates who are also seeking asylum.
In the epilogue of Asylum Denied, Kenney’s lawyer Philip Schrag boils down the asylum adjudication process to chance, arguing that if Kenney had initially received a different judge than Joan Churchill during his first appeal, whose grant rate was only seventeen percent between 2000 and 2005 compared to thirty percent average grant rate of judges in the Arlington district, his chances of attaining asylum would have been far greater.
Awards
In 2008, "Asylum Denied: A Refugee's Struggle for Safety in America" was one of several works awarded the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Books Award. The award recognizes books that advance human rights.3
Memory & Testimony
This book explores memory and testimony in very interesting ways. David Ngaruri Kenney was required to tell his story several times for different officials and lawyers. Each time he told his story, there were certain facts that changed and some perspectives were different. In some cases, Kenney's memory of his past was changed by new circumstances or experiences that he encountered. Asylum Denied is not just an oral history account, but is also a way for Kenney and Schrag to illustrate the problems within the asylum process. As a result, many of the memories depicted in the book include ways in which the system could be improved. There are also sections of the book that include Kenney's struggle to remember certain events. When talking with Bernie and Dave, Kenney's two student lawyers, Kenney has a great deal of difficulty connecting with and remembering the more difficult chapters of his life. Also significant is the way in which Kenney's culture impacts his memory. For instance, in his culture, Africans attach significantly less importance to exact dates on a calendar. Because of the importance of agriculture, the seasons are more commonly used to mark time. This is one reason that Kenney has such a hard time attaching dates to his arrest, calling his memory into question.
Memory is not static and does not remain the same over time. Instead, memory is fluid and is constantly changing with the different perspectives that a person gains through life experiences. This book is an important example of how memory can make a significant impact on someone's life choices and decisions. If Kenney could have remembered each event exactly the way they happened, the outcomes of his trials might have been different.
Impact on Oral History
Asylum Denied is a good example of oral history testimony and how memory can change over time. Kenney's cultural context and the subsequent events of his life, for example, falling in love, alter the way he perceives and relates past events. This is a common occurrence, and a significant topic of discussion within the discourse concerning oral history and the life story.
Although the text is co-authored, it is still an example of oral history. The authors write:
"We decided to write this book almost entirely from Kenney’s perspective. We began a series of meetings in which I interviewed him for a total of twelve hours. Drawing on my prior acquaintance with the case, our interviews, and the documentary record, I wrote a first draft of the book, which Kenney edited and supplemented. Then I took another crack at the manuscript, and in this way we passed it back and forth many times until each of us was satisfied."4
Going back and forth with the transcript eliminated possible errors in the text, but also may have diminished some of memories presented in the text. One of the major themes of the text was to make a case for changes in the asylum process, and the text was edited to include that information. This book is the story of David Ngaruri Kenney and is a work of oral history.
Quotations
"I do not share the perspective of members of Congress who think that asylum laws and procedures should be made more restrictive. My suggestions point in the direction of making them less random, more evenhanded, more compassionate, and more just. America’s immigration system, including its handling of asylum applications, is technical and complicated. We hope that by shedding light on this system, including some of its warts, through the story of a single asylum applicant, we can move at least some of our readers to insist that the United States improve its laws and institutions that are intended to protect the men and women who are victims of human rights violations throughout the world."5
"I thought about trying to leave the country, as some dissident students had done. But I learned that those students had been able to get out because they had relatives in the countries to which they fled. I also learned that it was almost impossible to leave without a passport, and I did not have one. When I realized that I could not escape, I decided to turn myself in. I walked to the police headquarters in Kerugoya, with dozens of farmers following me in solidarity."6
"I was upset about not being believed, but I could also see Craddock’s point of view. She had to make judgments on hundreds of asylum applications every year, and some of the people she interviewed were probably frauds. It must have been very difficult for her to imagine that a protest dreamed up by Wash and me, two peasant farmers with no organizing experience, could mushroom to the point of threatening a major export crop of an entire nation. Such a thing probably could not happen in the United States."7
"As we continued to work together, I realized my own power to remove the elements of my life that inhibited my desires and dreams. Just as I could physically remove from the sandbox a character that I did not like, I could overcome my fear of being hunted like an animal or killed by enemies. And just as I could create new models in the sandbox, I could create elements of a new life. I could imagine a future without fear."8
"With this message, I knew that I had become the prince in the fairy tale who can wed the king’s daughter only by succeeding in a quest ordered by the king. Each time the price completes a quest, however, the father demands a new one. I had applied for asylum, won and then lost voluntary departure, won the diversity visa lottery, had my marriage recognized by the American government, and received a waiver of the ten-year bar. Now the Department of Homeland Security had concocted a new obstacle to prevent me from being with my princess."9
References
(1) Kenney, David Ngaruri and Philip G. Schrag, [[Asylum Denied: A Refugee’s Struggle for Safety in America]] (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 8.
(2) Kenney, Asylum Denied, 169.
(3) Gustavus Myers Center, "Gustavus Myers Ceneter for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights: 2008 Award Winners," http://www.myerscenter.org/pages/08winners.htm
(4) Kenney, Asylum Denied, 7.
(5) Kenney, Asylum Denied, 8.
(6) Kenney, Asylum Denied, 36.
(7) Kenney, Asylum Denied, 92.
(8) Kenney, Asylum Denied, 133.
(9) Kenney, Asylum Denied, 299.
