Big Disparities in Judging of Asylum Cases

[JODO 2]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/washingt...okO6y3j3vQWKweg

Big Disparities in Judging of Asylum Cases

By JULIA PRESTON

Published: May 31, 2007

Asylum seekers in the United States face broad disparities in the nation's 54 immigration courts, with the outcome of cases influenced by things like the location of the court and the sex and professional background of judges, a new study has found.

The study, by three law professors, analyzes 140,000 decisions by immigration judges, including those cases from the 15 countries that have produced the most asylum seekers in recent years, among them China, Haiti, Colombia, Albania and Russia. The professors compared for the first time the results of immigration court cases over more than four years, finding vast differences in the handling of claims with generally comparable factual circumstances.

In one of the starker examples cited, Colombians had an 88 percent chance of winning asylum from one judge in the Miami immigration court and a 5 percent chance from another judge in the same court.

"It is very disturbing that these decisions can mean life or death, and they seem to a large extent to be the result of a clerk's random assignment of a case to a particular judge," said an author of the study, Philip G. Schrag, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

The study offers an unusually detailed window into the overburdened and often erratic immigration courts. Though the immigration bill now being considered does not propose major revisions in asylum laws, those courts serve as the judicial backbone of the immigration system that would take on an immense new workload if the bill becomes law.

Edited June 1, 2007 by JODO

[Alex+R 0]

Oh I saw that too... that bit about the judges in Miami (one approves 5% of Colombian asylum cases, the other 88%) was pretty shocking, but the fact that it's not a just system is not exactly shocking for those of us who have been through this process...

[peejay 327]

This doesn't surprise me considering the disparities in the agendas of the latest immigration bill. One side wants to let anyone and everyone from known gangsters to illiterate melon pickers to get full permanent residency / citizenship on demand while others are more inclined to be more thoughtful about what our immigration policy should be.

This is our home...we should be more thoughtful about the people we wish to have as neighbors. We cannot accomodate the entire frigging world. There is way too much fraud and cheating going on in regards to immigration. It has to stop and credibility returned to the system. We now have total immigration anarchy and the legislation in the Senate is no solution. It will make it even worst.