The Obama administration is toughening requirements for foreigners seeking asylum in the U.S., saying they must now demonstrate “a substantial and realistic possibility” of succeeding with their claims before they can go before an immigration judge, the government’s internal records show.
The new guidelines are meant to reinforce the government’s standard that allows asylum seekers to initially demonstrate a “significant possibility” they would prevail. The changes are outlined in a Feb. 28 memo sent by John Lafferty, chief of the asylum division at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
At issue are “credible fear interviews” conducted by federal officials who decide whether to deport the asylum seekers or refer them to immigration judges in the U.S.
Lafferty cited concerns that the government’s asylum standards have “lately been interpreted to require only a minimal or mere possibility of success.” He also linked the changes to a surge in asylum claims. Since fiscal year 2012, he said, his division has seen a 250 percent increase in referrals of people citing “credible fear” of returning to their home countries.
The National Immigrant Youth Alliance, an immigrant rights group that recently obtained a copy of Lafferty’s memo, called the change harsh. The alliance said the revision makes “the initial credible fear interview, meant to be a screening process with a low threshold, as rigorous as a full asylum proceeding, but without the due process protections available in front of a judge.”
A spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a prepared statement Friday, saying the government has long interpreted the law to require applicants to “demonstrate a substantial and realistic possibility of succeeding.”
“The current training guidelines are intended to ensure proper implementation of the statutory standard that governs these screenings,” the statement said.
To be granted asylum, foreigners must demonstrate they have suffered persecution in their home country or have a well-founded fear of experiencing it on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.
This week, the government released a new report showing immigration courts based in Georgia have some of the higher denial rates in the nation for foreigners seeking asylum in the U.S.
In the fiscal year ending in September, Atlanta’s immigration judges granted asylum in 24 cases and denied 195 for an 89 percent denial rate. Their counterparts based at the Stewart Detention Center in South Georgia granted one and rejected 54, resulting in a 98 percent denial rate.
Nationwide, the denial rate was 47 percent in the last fiscal year, when judges approved 9,933 cases and rejected 8,823.
The figures are included in the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Fiscal Year 2013 Statistics Yearbook, which was released this week. The report does not say why the asylum seekers were rejected or approved.
Winning asylum can be a matter of life and death for refugees fleeing violence in their home countries. But fraud has been a problem. Immigration judges have said they have denied asylum applications that were copied word for word among foreigners.
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