Thursday, December 5, 2002
U.S. immigration refuses asylum for unmarried Chinese couple
A story released today by the Associated Press reports that a couple who claimed they fled China to escape threats of forced sterilization and abortion were denied asylum by a federal appeals panel Thursday.
An immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals had earlier said Xu Ming Li and Xin Kui Yu were not eligible for asylum. In an opinion filed Thursday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
The couple's attorney, Michael Karr, said he would advise them to ask the full court to review the decision by the three-judge panel. Karr declined to comment further on the opinion.
Li and Yu, an unmarried couple, fled China in 1998 after officials gave Li a forced pregnancy exam. They fled to San Francisco, where they claimed they were United States citizens. They later admitted they were citizens of China.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service sought to send them back to China, but Li and Yu applied for asylum. Karr said Li was persecuted because she resisted a "coercive population control program" by the Chinese government.
Li was turned down by an immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals because she failed to demonstrate she had been persecuted in China, or that she had a well-founded fear of persecution, according to court documents. Justice Department spokesman Jorge Martinez declined to comment on the case.
Philip Hwang, staff attorney at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco, which helps low-income refugees seeking asylum, said the decision could make it more difficult for others. Hwang read the decision, but was not involved in the case.
"The danger is that the court has somehow raised the bar on what you need to show," Hwang said. "If a woman who has gone through an invasive physical examination of her private parts by strangers can't meet the standard for persecution, what is that going to mean for the next refugee?"
