WASHINGTON: The justice Department has drafted new rules to protect the rights of foreigners who seek asylum in the United States and fear Persecution in their homelands.
Immigration lawyers said the new procedures, if carried out properly, would help remove political considerations from asylum decisions and could make it easier for some victims of persecution to gain refuge in this country.
Last year 9,229 people were granted asylum, and 31, 54 7 applications were denied. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, a part of the Justice Department, received a record number of asylum applications last year, 101,
6 79. More than as 00 are pending.
A confidential draft of the new rules shows that the Justice Department intends to establish “a corps of professional asylum officers who are to receive special training in international relations and international law,” so they could rule on asylum applications with full knowledge of political conditions in the alien’s home country.
Immigration officials said they expected to issue the final rules this summer, but the Office of Management and Budget has delayed publication of the rules and is insisting that the Justice Department find a way to offset the cost. Immigration officials said the cost, mainly for personnel and office equipment, would be $5.5 million a year. Budget officials say it could be five times that.
Arthur C. Helton, director of the refugee project of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, said this week that the new rules “could be a positive step forward and could help aliens get asylum, assuming the rules are carried out in good faith, with sufficient resources and adequate training for the new asylum officers.”
Under the rules, the Government would “maintain a documentation center with information on human rights conditions” in various countries. Asylum officers would use such information in deciding whether aliens faced persecution at home.
The Justice Department has been operating under “interim rules” since the Refugee Act of 1980 established a uniform standard for granting political asylum. Federal efforts to rewrite those rules over the last decade prompted objections from immigration lawyers, who said the Government was undercutting the rights of aliens. Giving Aliens Benefit of a Doubt
Under the 1980 law, an alien in the United States may qualify for asylum if it can be shown there is “a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” A person granted asylum may later become a permanent resident and a United States citizen.
Numerous studies have concluded that decisions to grant or deny asylum were often influenced by political bias, reflecting United States foreign policy of the law enforcement priorities of the immigration service.
The new rules would give aliens the benefit of the doubt in several areas and would encourage asylum officers to make independent decisions, without necessarily following State Department recommendations.
The new rules say an alien seeking asylum in the United States need not prove that he or she would be “singled out individually for persecution” in the person’s homeland if it can be shown there is “a pattern or practice of persecuting the group of persons similarly situated.” In the past, the immigration service and some Federal courts required aliens to show that they would be singled out for persecution.
No Right of Appeal
Moreover, the new rules say an alien may qualify for asylum on the basis of the applicant’s own statements, without corroboration, if the testimony is “credible in light of general conditions” in the home country.
In cases where the immigration service issued a ruling, the approval rate last year varied from 3 percent for Poles, 33 percent for Nicaraguan and 62 percent for Iranians.
Under the new rules, the immigration service would interview each person seeking asylum and would solicit comments from: the State Department on each case. The rules say the alien “shall be given a copy of such comments and be provided an opportunity to respond.”
Under the new rules, an alien would have no right of appeal. But if the application for asylum is denied by an asylum officer, the alien may renew the application at a deportation hearing before an immigration judge,
The new rules say an alien seeking asylum would normally be allowed to work in the United States while the Government considers the application. In addition, the alien would be allowed to have a lawyer present when interviewed by an asylum officer. Under the rules, if an alien is granted asylum, a spouse and children, if any, would ordinarily be allowed to join the alien in the United States.
(New York Times) Whatever you are trying to avoid won’t go away until you confront it.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 13, 1990
