Foxnews.com
Immigration judges will tell you that there is a striking resemblance among the asylum cases filed by Chinese nationals. Since 1989, when Congress passed a bill that directed the INS to give "careful consideration" to asylum applicants who expressed a fear of persecution related to China’s "one child" policy, Chinese “family planning” cases have been flooding the government’s inboxes like spam.
Though the first President Bush vetoed the bill, he implemented its major provisions by executive order in response to the Tiananmen Square incident, directing that “enhanced consideration be provided under the immigration laws for individuals from any country who express a fear of persecution ... related to [their] country's policy of forced abortion or coerced sterilization.”
But like spam, Chinese family planning cases are almost never what they hold themselves out to be.
Bush (41)'s order marked what is probably the first time the U.S. government mapped out for aliens exactly how to obtain a grant of asylum, and word traveled across the Pacific almost instantly. In theory, giving asylum to the refugee is one of the noblest things a nation can do, but in practice, the asylum application is the form to pull out when there is no other legal basis to remain in the U.S.
When the executive order was first issued, many immigration judges took it to mean that they should grant asylum to any individual who testified that she believed she would be persecuted for violating China’s one child policy. But many thousands of grants later, immigration authorities began to conclude that most of the claims were fatuous.
The initial success of the Chinese family planning case spawned an industry. Like the famous Chinese language book "What You Need to Know about Life in America" -- which instructed its readers in the art of obtaining public assistance -- the names of immigration lawyers specializing in family planning cases were passed from one potential asylum seeker to the next.
Posted by Suzanne at February 5, 2004