No matter where you live, join The Refugee Experience Series book club from Nov. 1 to Jan. 15, 2009 and read the featured book: Asylum Denied by David Ngaruri Kenney and Philip G. Schrag. Send an email to the.refugee.experience.series@gmail.com to receive book club updates, events, and online discussion on our Idealist.org forum. In January, we will host a book signing and discussion dinner with the authors in Washington, DC. Invite your circle of friends to join the club and read this interesting page-turner and at times, funny book.

Asylum Denied is the gripping story of political refugee David Ngaruri Kenney’s harrowing odyssey through the Kafkaesque world of immigration processing in the United States. While living in his native Kenya, Kenney led a boycott to protest his government’s treatment of his fellow farmers. This book tells of his near-murder, imprisonment, and torture in Kenya; his remarkable escape to the United States; and the obstacle course of ordeals and proceedings he faced as U.S. government agencies sought to deport him to Kenya.

A story of courage, love, perseverance, and legal strategy, Asylum Denied brings to life the human costs associated with our immigration laws and suggests policy reforms that are desperately needed to help other victims of human rights violations.

Book Reviews:
For those of you looking for a good summer read to take to the beach, or just a great book to snuggle up with on a rainy day, I highly recommend opening up the pages of Asylum Denied. It is both informative and inspiring as it tells the story of David Kenney Ngaruri, the political asylee who struggled to stay in America. Although the book is currently being passed around law schools, as the new go-to-guide for asylum law, I am sure it will not be long before it makes the bestseller stands at nation-wide bookstores or grabs a spot on Oprah's booklist. Asylum Denied, written by two authors, the above-mentioned David Kenney Ngaruri and Philip Schrag, the professor of law at Georgetown University, serves both as a law manual and as a heart-warming story of adventure, perseverance, and love. Unlike most law-related books, it reads very smoothly and catches your attention from the first page. Even if this is not the usual type of book you read, I urge you to give it a try. If the face on the cover of the book is not enough to convince you to read it, then I hope this review will. ~Sara Gates "NYU student"

More reviews at http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/11079.php.

A friend asked me a question about my feelings towards the author given my own experiences. I thought you might be interested in my response:

Dede: "Vivian, I'm wondering whether you not only sympathize but empathize with David Ngaruri because of your story. Of course you both are coming from very different places."

Vivian: "Well, I felt angry actually when I read about David's situation. The tea cash-crop story in the begining reminds me of those colonization Indian movies. Perhaps I was just ignorant but before reading the book, I hardly ever heard about Kenya in a bad light. In fact I thought the country was a model for sustainable development in Africa. This book shined a spotlight on an ugly aspect of government and multi-national corporations for the "economic development" of Kenaya. You'll see that the farmers were caught up in a supply and demand cycle that just doesn't make sense. And somehow David had the courage to stand up and say something about it and that inspired others to stand up and then the next thing you know...he was imprisoned and tortured. When his day in court came in Kenaya...I laughed so hard! The Judge asked for evidience that we has trying to overthrow the government and the evidence the authorities provide was nonsense. The story background is serious but the book is written in a very easy to read and at times has its hilarious moments. Of course I'm only 1/3 through so I'm looking forward to more funnies ahead.

I was but a child (5) when we went through our boat person ordeal and frankly, the heavens were merciful and we were extremely lucky. We were out on the ocean only a couple of weeks or so and then were rescued by an oil ship (like the Exxon Valdez). They rammed our little boat to legitimately report a rescue at sea per the law of the sea. Then they dropped us all off in Malaysia for processing at a refugee camp there. We spent a little over 2 months there before my aunt sponsored us to come to the US. She went with the Americans when they evacuated.

In the Vietnamese refugee communities around the world...it is known that if your boat was picked up by Thai pirates...you were dead. They slit the throats of the Viettnamese refugee men and raped the women and girls. Of course, you could die on the high seas without water or a terrible storm/monsoon could come and destroyed your little boat. Our boat was a small fishing vessel with 95 people huddled together. I think it was toughest the night we all tried to sneak out to sea. Everyone was beneath the deck and the women had to keep their babies quiet. The fishermen slowly took the boat out to sea on the top deck as if they were just going about their normal work day. If we got caught, everyone would be imprisoned. It's treason to leave Vietnam like that...otherwise the Communist government would have allowed everyone access to passports.

My story is very different, and I am bless with not remembering much before the age of 7. All I know of my experience is from my mother and family friends who came over for dinner and had these chats of the good old days and how the war changed everything. I feel sad that David, the author of Asylum Denied went through what he did but I also feel very happy he made it to the US and is now a very productive member of our global society. For every one refugee/asylee that makes it to the promise land (any first world country that allows you to stay legally and gives you citizenship) there are thousands who are not as lucky and it is for those people that I sympathize the most with and work so diligently for (as well as internally displaced people)."

Vivian, thanks again for sharing. The ordeal you and Kenney endured seems to strengthen resolve.

I was wondering how you guys thought Kenney’s upbringing affected his readiness to stand up to what is right?

I personally was struck by Kenny’s resilience and fortitude in the face of those who tried to break him physically and mentally. It was not as if he did not work; Kenney and other farmers worked diligently and did everything that was supposed to be done to make sure that their harvest would be fruitful in the hopes of creating a better life for their families, but they still could not get ahead. He was detrimentally affected, and his instincts told him the policies were awry. Kenney attempted to forge differences and work with those that had an incentive to maintain farming practices that seemed to keep peasant farmers “in their place” in the socioeconomic heirarchy and obstruct their advancement, in order to keep knowledge, access, and wealth in the hands of a few. He had the courage to stand up and question practices that seemingly exhibited disregard for the farmers wellbeing, instead of blindly accepting leaders’ directives that negatively impacted them. Kenny was respectful of authority, yet thought independently and refused to give in to laws forced on the people that seemed to cultivate dependency and prevent them from getting ahead and making strides towards their goals. Even when tortured by those attempting to rob the farmers of their will and create subservient acquiescence, Kenney bravely stressed that the movement, once started, could not be suppressed, even if you killed him. Kenney and other farmers persevered and fought.

Call me a sappy romantic but I just loved how David Ngaruri Kenney met his wife and how they fell in love. At least he was lucky in love. His life was like a bad dream he couldn't wake up from. I was able to speak to Kenney on Sunday for the first time and he hit the nail on the head when he told me the insanity that our whole justice system isn't able to correct what an Asylum Officer decides based on incomplete information for asylum due to cultural differences. The deeper in read into this book, the more I find that Kenney is a modern day Odysseus on his US asylum Odyssey. The minute I think he's going to make it, something goes awry. I really look forward to meeting him and Prof. Schrag in person on Jan. 15th at the dinner discussion. Hope you can make it! For more details, go to http://the.refugee.experience.series.googlepages.com

Hey guys. I thought some of you might be interested in this panel discussion happening TOMORROW! check out the details below. I will hopefully see many of you Thursday! ~Kira

Immigration Authority as a Counterterrorism Tool

Who: Georgetown University School of Law What: panel discussion When: January 14, 2009; lunch at 12:00 pm; discussion from 12:15 - 2:00 pm Where: Georgetown



University Law Center, Room 164 McDonough, 600 New Jersey Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20001, 202-662-9000 RSVP: Email RSVP@constitutionproject.org at your earliest convenience with your name, the number of attendees, and the event name. (A box lunch will be provided. There is no charge to attend.)

~ Please join the Constitution Project and the Human Rights Institute as we co-host a discussion on the Constitution Project's newly released report on immigration and the

fight against terrorism. This discussion will incorporate a wide variety of perspectives on the intersection between immigration law and counterterrorism efforts. We will examine the value and efficiency of immigration laws passed in the wake of 9-11 balanced against constitutional rights and individual liberties. Confirmed panelists include Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies, CATO Institute; Wendy Patten, Senior Policy Analyst, Open Society Policy Center; and Shoba Wadhia, Director, Center for Immigrants' Rights, Penn State Dickinson School of Law. Becky Monroe, Policy Counsel at the Constitution Project, will moderate.

Contact: www.law.georgetown.edu/humanrightsinstitute/

how did the book discussion go? I joined this group a few days before the event so hadn't read the book, but it is definitely on my to-read list.