guidance for LGBTI applicants in applying for asylum

http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Humanitarian/Refugees%20%26%20Asylum/Asylum/Asylum%20Native%20Documents%20and%20Static%20Files/RAIO-Training-March-2012.pdf


This is a official guidance for claim document you use when you apply for asylum in the States as a LGBTI person. I thought this was an interesting piece of document especially because a lot of countries do not provide asylum for a LGBTI person.

I personally read this because one of my friends at Berkeley is writing a case study on Korean FTM transgender and he was suggested by another friend that he should apply for the specific asylum.
Below is part of the introduction of the document:

"It has been over 20 years since Fidel Armando Toboso Alfonso, a gay man from Cuba, was granted withholding of deportation in the United States based on his sexual orientation.1 The Toboso-Alfonso decision paved the way for hundreds of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals as well as individuals with intersex conditions (LGBTI) to obtain refugee and asylum status in the United States. Recently, the United Nations marked another “significant milestone in the long struggle for equality, and the beginning of a universal recognition that LGBT[I] persons are endowed with the same inalienable rights – and entitled to the same protections – as all human beings”2 by passing a Resolution on Human Rights, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity. The increasing number of refugee and asylum (protection) claims related to LGBTI and HIV-positive status has resulted in the need for greater awareness of the issues involved in these claims and training on their adjudication.3 "





-Juwon