Barack Obama's aunt wins US plea for asylum
President's rightwing critics furious as Zeituni Onyango granted right to stay indefinitely after overstaying visa for six years
Barack Obama's aunt, Zeituni Onyango, at her home in Boston.
Barack Obama's aunt has been granted asylum after living illegally in the US, to the frustration of the president's rightwing critics who say that undocumented immigrants are flooding the country.
Zeituni Onyango, 57, lives in Boston and is the half-sister of Obama's father. She moved to America 10 years ago on a valid visa. Two years later she applied for asylum, but was rejected and ordered to leave in 2004. However, she overstayed her visa and remained in the country illegally until she won a new hearing.
Her most recent asylum case was brought on the grounds that she might be in danger if she returned to Kenya because of political and ethnic violence, and because she is related to the US president. She also sought to remain because she is suffering from an autoimmune disorder.
Her lawyer, Scott Bratton, declined to say on what grounds the immigration court had granted her the right to remain in the US indefinitely. "The asylum process is confidential and she wants to keep it that way, so we can't get into details on why the judge granted asylum, or the exact basis for her claim," he said.
In his memoir, Dreams From My Father, Obama speaks affectionately of "Auntie Zeituni", who helped him understand his family's history during a visit to Kenya in 1988. But Obama said he did not know his aunt was in the US until it was revealed by the press before the 2008 presidential election. He said he would not intervene in the case. "Any and all appropriate laws" would be followed, he said then.
That has not stopped the president's critics from suggesting he has somehow influenced the process. The rightwing Fox News commentator Glenn Beck has called for Onyango to be deported.
"Now, social justice dictates that because somehow or another, she's special, whether it's her medical condition, her position in life, her race, or maybe it's just because she happens to be President Obama's aunt that she gets to stay in the US illegally, even after her request for political asylum was rejected in 2004," he said last month.
Onyango made a $265 contribution to Obama's presidential campaign, but the money was returned because she was not a US citizen. She attended his inauguration in January 2009, but the pair did not meet each other.
Onyango could now become an American citizen in six years – too late to vote for Obama if he runs for reelection.
