After 14 years, the pathway to asylum in the United States for Rody Alvarado seems finally to have cleared, with the Obama Administration indicating this week in a filing in immigration court that it considers her to be eligible for asylum.  This story in the New York Times by Julia Preston gives some of the background on the case and quotes Karen Musalo, director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at Hastings College of Law, who has been Ms. Alvarado’s lawyer.  Musalo calls this “the iconic case of domestic abuse as a basis for asylum.”  As Preston reported in an earlier story last July, the new administration laid out its position last spring in a brief  that suggests what the guidelines will be for approving asylum in domestic violence caes.  The initial decision of the Board of Immigarion Appeals denying asylum to Ms. Avarado was In re R.A., Int. Dec. 3403 (BIA 1999).