A simple SF57 soft glass photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with a rhombic array of four elliptical holes in the core region and a hexagonal lattice of elliptical air hole cladding was proposed. The birefringence and effective mode area of the proposed PCF were studied by the full vectorial finite element method with anisotropic perfectly matched layers. A high birefringent SF57 soft glass PCF with low effective mode area has been obtained, which shows good polarization stability and large tolerance to fabrication errors. The proposed PCF has high birefringenceup to 1.01×10-1, low mode areas of 1.52μm2 and 1.55μm2 for x and y polarizations at 1.55μm.