Political asylum in the United states is usually granted when a person feels he or she may be persecuted or have a well-founded fear of imminent persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. We think of political asylum being granted to avoid torture, imprisonment, physical harm. We do not, as Americans, think of giving political asylum to avoid going to private or public school.
A Tennessee judge has granted asylum to a German couple and their children so the couple may home school their children. German is one of the few European countries that enforces compulsory attendance in a recognized school. According to Yahoo News:
The Romeikes are not your typical asylum seekers. They did not come to the U.S. to flee war or despotism in their native land. No, these music teachers left Germany because they didn’t like what their children were learning in public school – and because homeschooling is illegal there.
“It’s our fundamental rightto decide how we want to teach our children,” says Uwe Romeike, an Evangelical Christian and a concert pianist who sold his treasured Steinway to help pay for the move.
Romeike decided to uproot his family in 2008 after he and his wife had accrued about $10,000 in fines for homeschooling their three oldest children and police had turned up at their doorstep and escorted them to school. “My kids were crying, but nobody seemed to care,” Romeike says of the incident
