thank you sir thank you good morning your honor may please the court my name is eric welsh i represent the petitioners the somme and this petition for review from the fourth immigration appeals the assad family is seeking a petition for review in this court because the board of immigration appeals and the immigration court erred in denying their applications for asylum withholding or for move all and relief under the convention against torture they did err in several respects most fundamentally dealing with credibility the central issue in this case is the board in the judge's decision that did not provide credible testimony in support of their applications for relief and because of that iran is finding a credibility the board and the judge wrongly decided that there was not changed circumstances that would and with great deference that the terminations must be reasonable and they must consider the totality of the circumstance but if substantial evidence right of substantial evidence supports credibility determination then we have no way to get involved correct yes judgment that's and i and i appreciate your argument at least as to the years in question because we have seeing the dogs all of which suggests that the inability to recall precise dates of events may not be enough but what about the different accounts of what happened to the brother those seem to be quite important because they are attacks and their attacks on his son and their attacks on his son which is different from the parents and this is another son so it seems to me those are pretty important facts they would go to the heart of the issue would you agree i do your honor i do ok so if there's if it goes to the heart of issue and put neil says he was hit in the head with a bat and when confronted well this was a prior event in two thousand and one and he's confused later said it had it occurred in two thousand and three then said to attack a sister said the attack was a pia was a hit on the chest her brother said it's a it was a machete how can i say there's not substantial evidence sustain that well i think the consistent through line of the testimony  are testifying only about something there in the telephone anyway yes i mean they have this declaration from the brother the brother explains what happened the who wife's story tracks the brother except the brother says he didn't know it was the n p a for two years and she says they said it was the end so that clearly was made up because it appears because the brother says he didn't realize for two years that it was the n p a which certainly seems to make a difference as to what the motivation was read the brothers declaration right it's kind of silly and it's a result i absolutely agree that it is a little bit silly and i think the reason it's silly is that you're making or that the judge and the board making a credibility assessment whether or not there is an actual according to how the judge believes it should be given way and i think that this case is an example of the weight given the wrong place and so that the judge is according to the testimony of the two witnesses in court who had no direct experience of the harm that happened in the philippines their family members and the judge has given very little weight to the statements from the family members who suffered that harm so we have inconsistent statements from witnesses providing hearsay evidence who did not have first hand experience but the bottom line is they had the affidavit they knew what was on it and yet in order to get what they wanted they seem to change it to suit themselves which seems to be substantial evidence about their credibility but respectfully just met i disagree that they did it with a motive to enhance their chances of winning i think they did it because they're not good witnesses i believe affidavit and then we have these testimony about what happened then they change it to themselves in order to make their case look better that seems to be a credibility determination and which i can't say there isn't substantial evidence only judge and if there was a motive to make their cases look better if it seemed as if there were inconsistent statements that were some attempt to bolster their claim we're just going to you know that was the case but you got tony out saying one thing and then you got the husband saying he was hit in the head with a bat then when confronted he takes it to a different year and then he says he's confused and then he takes it to another year and then he says there are two attacks right and that underlies the fact that they didn't really have a full understanding of what was happening they knew from their family that there was something very bad question is well i mean let's assume that their basic story that they were told that there was this problem with the family i problems here but and seven not i mean they don't have any pastors script persecution and their future persecution and the parents are still there they haven't been attacked i mean clearly the parents don't want them  there they think the place is dangerous whether they think it's dangerous because of their particular circumstances or just because of the whole situation the philippines is less clear and there was the credibility finding here was kind of an afterthought i mean in fact the basic holding of the immigration judge was that there's just not enough here to show even a ten percent of our fear of of harm right you're on and i think that the ten percent is crucial here because that is a low threshold when it comes to the fear of harm and i believe in my reading of this case that the judge made the credibility assessment because the judge didn't want to find the like harm i agree with your assessment i think though that because attention went to what the credibility was i believe an afterthought was an afterthought because he thought they didn't have a case anyway because they didn't think that there was a likelihood of harm these people or n p a but that was sort of incidental so even if you go in his story entirely so what you have is a lot of fear and which did seem to to that all the other relatives leaving but nothing actually happened and even if that is the case your honor that doesn't mean that the fear has abated it doesn't mean that there is no concern about going back there is no of them this family the son family is aligned with a presidential family but in fact they didn't the parents stayed in the house and they stay in the house so far and thank god always the sister and there's no evidence  we still have a side object of standard anyway your time is up i could be mayor there weren't a credible and it's probably because of those very trial like we were having they may not have been in i mean they were second hand witnesses anyway they didn't see what happened to the fact had a fear and the family was in fact concerned and seems at bottom was true the question was was were they concerned enough you know the answer to it's not a case in which it's helpful to start nitpicking the credibility finding and then their credibility because i seems to me they're at least credible to the degree that this family really wasn't fear lots of subjective affairs or no and maybe even objective  has to consider it's whether or not the alien satisfied their objective burden of proof that their fears reasonable and while they might subjectively fear based on yes a second hand conversation and the latter letters and statements from relatives they still bear the burden of providing a credible and persuasive set of testimony set of evidence and the record here yes the adverse credibility finding here informs all of that and that undermines everything as well as the family i think i really don't understand why we are worried or anybody's wearing very much about whether their second hand story about what happened to the brother was consistent or not i mean we have the brother story when we just believe the brother story and forget about whether their story was right or wrong again that's their burden of proof to present their best case and if they're going to present evidence that is inconsistent that somebody years before i was this conversation telephone the conversation on the telephone occurred in two thousand and five and when was the hearing i believe the hearing was in two thousand and ten all right here because it was second hand well the whole point of the saying is that when you see something you remember it short but you don't remember the day and the day to second i secondary it's not a sense perception hearing nothing was a sense really reverts back and the only reason i asked the questions i did about the credibility determination is because he suggested the credibility determination is the reason they couldn't find if that is well founded fear of persecution but there's another reason the credibility determination might be important and that's because they had a june two thousand and five hearing and at that hearing bowles that the mother and the father admitted all the allegations conceded remove ability requested voluntary departure had minute they'd never been persecuted they did not fare persecution they didn't fear the new people's army and then after that they came up with a new lawyer and now they got affidavit and now they're being challenged about those affidavits isn't that the truth no disagreement on this this call happened apparently the day that they did all of those things they conceded their movability and called home both of them on the call and learned about these things that apparently the family didn't want to legislate trouble them with but then we get into questions as to when the things happened that were discussed on that call including whether or not the parents even had a phone t and there's just so many into sissy's here that things that don't match up with each other one a couple of points that were raised that initially as well as whether or not these go to the heart of the issue that's not the standard of the  conceded here that that would go to the heart of the claim so must satisfy even the old standard again the fissures bear the burden of proof and one other critical argument that was raised in the primary argument my opponent was that the court is the agency improperly weighed evidence and that's simply not something this court can do under the substantial evidence standard this court can't really weigh evidence the record must compel a contrary conclusion leaving no room for anything else all as well as getting to the of large number of people left the initial basis of the threat allegedly was that the father had served in i believe the personal security for the president and something to do with the land deal but ultimately this court's decision in a strat is a whole line of cases behind that talk about the family remaining in the home