[QUOTE=Bricker]
Sorta.
The “fear of persecution” cannot be generalized; it must be a specific fear and a demonstration of a clear probability of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a defined social group. INS v. Stevic, 467 U.S. 407, 104 (1984). It is not applicable to persecution or even torture targeted specifically to an individual. Persecution does not encompass all treatment that our society regards as unfair, unjust, or even unlawful or unconstitutional. Fatin v. INS, 12 F.3d 1233, 1240 (3rd Cir. 1993).
The decision of the immigration officials will be upheld by the courts unless no reasonable fact-finder could fail to find the requisite fear of persecution. Milosevic v. INS, 18 F.3d 366, 370 (7th Cir. 1994).
In Balazoski v. INS, 932 F.2d 638 (7th Cir. 1991), Hasan Balazoski tried to prevent his deportation to Yugoslavia. He was a supporter of Albanian nationalism while he lived in Yugoslavia, and his niece was shot for her participation in anti-government protests. He himself had taken part in protests for Albanian independence, and had been arrested and questioned by Yugoslavian officials regarding his political beliefs. This was held to be insufficient evidence of persecution.
So in order to assume that a person could avoid the return to Egypt that my hypothetical sent him on, he’d have to be possessed of a fair amount of factual backstory beyond that suggested in my hypo.
[/QUOTE]
Trust me, I know, I have handled asylum matters. My only issue was with the general statement that if someone is in the country illegally, that “we have every legal ability in the world to deport him.” Obviously he has an obligation to show entitlement to asylum. Hence the last part of my comment - “if he meets the standards agreed to by the United States under international treaty for asylum.”
Asylum is tough to get - it is also disturbingly arbitrary. But the right to asylum remains an important legal block on the ability of nations to deport illegal immigrants and wash their hands of the treatment that those individuals will receive in their home country.
What’s certain is their is no consistency - while Balazoski shows a restrictive view of fear of persecution, another 7th Circuit case Bastanipour v. INS, 980 F.2d 1129 (7th Cir. 1992) shows a much more liberal approach. An Iranian convicted of dealing heroin (from memory here…) converted from Islam to Christianity in prison. The Court found that his claim alone of conversion was sufficient to establish a reasonable fear of persecution if deported to Iran (as required under law). In particular, they refused to consider if his conversion was opportunistic - the fact that he had any outward indicia of conversion would to the Court be sufficient to place him in danger if he returned to Iran.
