Alberto Gonzales was sworn in as United States Attorney *

General on February 3, 2005. We have therefore substituted Attorney

General Gonzales for John Ashcroft as the respondent. See

Fed.R.Civ.P. 25(d)(1); Fed. R.App. P. 43(c)(2).

United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit

No. 04-2682

NAI QING XU,

Petitioner,

v.

ALBERTO GONZALES, Attorney General,*

Respondent.

ON PETITION FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER

OF THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS

Before

 Boudin, Chief Judge,

Stahl, Senior Circuit Judge,

and Howard, Circuit Judge.

Wei Jia, on brief for petitioner.

Eugenia M. Carris, Assistant United States Attorney,

and Michael J. Sullivan, United States Attorney, on brief for

respondent.

September 16, 2005
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STAHL, Senior Circuit Judge. Petitioner Nai Qing Xu seeks

review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA)

affirming a denial of his application for asylum and withholding of

removal. Finding no error, we affirm.

I. Background

The Immigration Judge (IJ) who heard his initial petition

determined that Xu was not credible and therefore did not rely on

Xu's account in reaching his decision. On appeal, however, the BIA

determined that, "[e]ven if we were to find the respondent

credible, we would nonetheless agree with the Immigration Judge

that the respondent failed to meet his burden of proof." In setting

forth the facts of the case, we, like the BIA, presume Xu's

truthfulness, and recite the facts as he represented them in his

petition.

Xu is a native and citizen of the People's Republic of

China. He was born on November 18, 1980, in Lianjiang, China. After

attending school from 1989 to 1997, he began working as a clerk in

a store in his hometown. He was still employed at the store when,

in June of 2001, he joined other members of his community at a

local voting site where the village leadership was to be elected;

the contest was between the incumbent chief, whom Xu seems to have

supported, and an underworld challenger whose candidacy Xu opposed.

At the site, Xu protested the unfairness of the electoral process,

exclaiming, "What is this all about, this is not an election, let's
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go home." So saying, he and a group of other disaffected voters

left the voting site. 

The challenger, apparently displeased by Xu's

performance, expressed that displeasure by sending a squad of thugs

to the store at which Xu worked, where the intruders beat him,

though not severely enough that he required hospitalization, and

threatened to close down the store if he dared to open it again. As

a result of the threat and the beating, Xu was scared to stay in

his hometown, and believed that, because of the trouble he had

caused, he would have difficulty getting the local government to

sign off on certain documentation he needed, with the result that,

wherever in China he went, he "couldn't do anything." Xu fled to an

adjacent town, eventually resolving to come to the United States.

After an abortive attempt to depart via Thailand, Xu returned to

China, finally making his way out of the country on a falsified

passport, traveling from mainland China to Hong Kong, to the

Netherlands, to Suriname, and from there to the United States.

Xu arrived on United States territory on October 20,

2001. Within hours of disembarking from a speedboat on the island

of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Xu was caught and detained

by agents of what was then the Immigration and Naturalization

Service (INS). The INS commenced removal proceedings against him on

November 15 of the same year. Xu conceded removability but
Xu's initial petition for relief included a request for 1

withholding of removal and for protection under the CAT, but Xu did

not appeal the IJ's denial of his CAT claim to the BIA and does not

now challenge the BIA's denial of his request for withholding of

removal. Those issues are not before us, and we consider only Xu's

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requested asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the

Convention Against Torture (CAT). 

On July 17, 2003, an IJ denied all relief. The IJ

determined that Xu was not credible and had presented little

probative evidence beyond his oral testimony. On that basis the IJ

ruled that Xu had not met his burden of proof with respect to any

of the claimed grounds for relief. Xu timely appealed the IJ's

asylum and withholding of removal determinations to the BIA. On

November 16, 2004, the BIA affirmed the IJ's decision, holding that

Xu's account, even if true, did not justify granting asylum or

withholding of removal because he had failed to meet his burden of

proof. Xu petitioned this court for review of the BIA's decision.

II. Discussion

Here, Xu argues 1) that the determination of the IJ that

he was not credible is reviewable by this court and was in error.

He also argues 2) that the BIA erred in its holding that he failed

to meet his burden of proof with respect to whether he held a wellfounded fear of future persecution, contending a) that the BIA

should have considered whether he had suffered from past

persecution, and b) that it erred in finding he had not directly

proved a well-founded fear of future persecution.1
asylum claim.

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A. Standard of Review

We uphold decisions of the BIA with respect to asylum if

“supported by reasonable, substantial, and probative evidence on

the record considered as a whole.” Settenda v. Ashcroft, 377 F.3d

89, 93 (1st Cir. 2004) (quoting INS v. Elias-Zacarias, 502 U.S.

478, 481, 112 S.Ct. 812, 117 L.Ed.2d 38 (1992)) This standard is

known as the "substantial evidence" standard. It is only by way of

shorthand that we speak of "substantial evidence," however, when

the issue presented, as here, is whether an agency was justified in

finding that a petitioner failed to carry his burden of proof,

since the agency's determination in such a case is based, not on

substantial evidence supporting its decision, but on a petitioner's

failure to provide evidence that would support a holding in his

favor. In these circumstances, what we call "substantial evidence"

review permits us to reverse "only if the petitioner's evidence

would compel a reasonable factfinder to conclude that relief was

warranted." Id. 

B. The IJ's Credibility Determination

Xu asks this court to require the BIA to make an express

holding as to an asylum petitioner's credibility, or, where none

has been made, to review the IJ's decision for the reasonableness

of his credibility determination. We cannot and need not review the

credibility determination of the IJ, however, because the BIA has
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explicitly disclaimed that the IJ's adverse credibility

determination was part of the basis for the its holding. The BIA

opinion is explicit that its holding that Xu did not meet his

burden of proof would stand even if it had accepted Xu's story as

true. (As we noted above, the BIA determined that, "[e]ven if we

were to find the respondent credible, we would nonetheless agree

with the Immigration Judge that the respondent failed to meet his

burden of proof.") Because the BIA's decision did not turn on Xu's

credibility, the BIA did not have to, and did not, make its own

determination of Xu's credibility. Where the BIA does not adopt an

IJ's opinion but instead makes an independent, superceding

decision, we review the decision of the BIA, and not that of the

IJ. Njenga v. Ashcroft, 386 F.3d 335, 338 (1st Cir. 2004). Because

the BIA made no determination of Xu's credibility in reaching its

decision, Xu's credibility is not an issue here.

C. Fear of Persecution

A petitioner hoping to receive asylum in the United

States bears the burden of establishing his eligibility by proving

that he qualifies as a refugee. 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1). This may be

done in either of two ways: "(1) by demonstrating a well-founded

fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality,

membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, or

(2) by proving past persecution on account of one of the

aforementioned grounds, which entitles an applicant to a
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presumption of a well-founded fear of persecution." Diab v.

Ashcroft, 397 F.3d 35, 39 (1st Cir. 2005) (citing 8 U.S.C. §

1101(a)(42)(A); 8 C.F.R. § 208.13(b)). The BIA did not address the

question whether Xu proved past persecution, but found that Xu had

failed to directly prove a well-founded fear of future persecution.

Xu now claims that the BIA erred both in failing to address past

persecution, and in finding him to have fallen short of proving a

well-founded fear of future persecution.

i. Past Persecution

The IJ considered only whether Xu had established

directly that he suffered a well-founded fear of future

persecution, and did not address the sufficiency of Xu's claims of

past persecution to establish a presumption that his fear of future

persecution was well-founded. The BIA did not address the omission,

and Xu now claims that it should have. The BIA was under no such

obligation, however, because Xu did not argue the point to the BIA

in his appeal from the IJ's decision, and so waived the issue. 

"Issues not raised before the Board may not be raised for

the first time upon judicial review of the Board's decisions."

Ravindran v. I.N.S., 976 F.2d 754, 761 (1st Cir. 1992). In

determining whether an appeal of a particular issue from the BIA's

decision has been preserved, we read the record "in the light most

favorable to petitioner." Id. 
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Xu presented the BIA with the question, "Whether

Respondent has a well-founded fear for [sic] future persecution?"

While noting that a well-founded fear could be established either

directly or presumptively through evidence of past persecution, Xu

never argued to the BIA that in his case his past persecution

justified a presumption that his fear of persecution on his return

was well-founded. Mere notation of the applicable law, without any

argumentation as to how it applies to a petitioner's case, does not

raise the issue of its application. Xu's contention as to the legal

effect of any persecution he experienced in the past was therefore

not raised before the BIA, and so may not be raised here.

ii. Direct Demonstration of a Fear of Persecution

All that remains is whether the BIA properly determined

that Xu had not offered sufficient direct proof that he had a wellfounded fear of persecution in China that would justify offering

him asylum. We consider both whether the BIA's opinion was

sufficiently clear to support our review, and the not-unrelated

question whether the BIA's decision, if reviewable, was supported

by the record or whether the petitioner's evidence should have

compelled it to hold otherwise.

Although the BIA's opinion was brief and summary in tone,

we find it sufficiently clear to permit meaningful review. We

recently reiterated that "we may remand ... if the BIA's opinion

fails to state with sufficient particularity and clarity the
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reasons for denial of asylum." Halo v. Gonzales, No. 05-1076, 2005

WL 1970795, at *3 (1st Cir. Aug. 17, 2005) (quoting Gailius v. INS,

147 F.3d 34, 46 (1st Cir. 1998) (internal quotation marks omitted).

In Halo, the BIA affirmed an IJ's denial of asylum in an opinion

markedly similar to the one it issued here, disclaiming reliance on

the IJ's adverse credibility determination and briefly indicating

that the petitioner had nevertheless failed to satisfy his burden

of proof. The BIA must indeed set forth the basis for its

determination "with such clarity as to be understandable," id.

(quoting Gailius, 147 F.3d at 44), and here as in Halo the BIA

opinion was brief and summary. When considering whether the clarity

of an administrative decision is sufficient to support our review,

however, we are not blind to the context in which the decision is

made or oblivious of the record on which it is based. 

We held in Halo that, where the administrative record of

a case could easily be thought to compel a conclusion contrary to

the one reached by the BIA, it is incumbent on the agency to give

some reasoned explanation for the conclusion it reached. Here,

because the danger Xu claimed he feared at home was so slight, the

facts speak for themselves, and could not easily be thought to

compel the BIA to find that Xu feared persecution at home. The

BIA's short opinion satisfied our procedural requirements.

For the same reason, the facts did not compel the BIA to

rule differently than it did in Xu's case, and so Xu's substantive
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claim that his case compels reversal of the BIA's decision fails.

In order to demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution on one

of the relevant grounds by direct proof, a petitioner must satisfy

the BIA both that his fear is genuine, and that it is reasonable.

Mediouni v. I.N.S., 314 F.3d 24, 27 (1st Cir. 2002). Xu himself

admitted that he could return to his country without any fear of

being hunted down, and the BIA cited that admission in determining

that he was not, in fact, afraid: "We specifically note the

respondent's testimony stating that no one will look for him if he

returns and that one of the reasons he left was because he could

not receive 'documentation.' These statements contradict the

respondent's alleged fear of harm." Because the BIA's opinion is

not deficient, and because Xu's evidence would not "compel a

reasonable factfinder to conclude that relief was warranted,"

Mediouni, 314 F.3d at 27, we will not disturb the determination of

the BIA.

III. Conclusion

For the reasons stated above, we affirm the decision of

the BIA. 

The petition for review is denied.