Opinion ID: 2810934
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: IJ’s Findings

Text: The IJ summarized Qiu’s hearing testimony, noting among other things, that Qiu had testified that her mother and sister-in-law were both forcibly sterilized after giving birth to multiple children in China, and that Qiu believed she herself would be sterilized and fined if returned to China. The IJ further noted that Qiu “testified that if she were removed to China, she would register her first-born child in her household registry but if she were to register the second child, she would be forcibly sterilized.” The IJ indicated that Qiu “pointed to Exhibit 5, tabs P and Q, in support of this proposition,” but did not identify what these documents were, 7 Case: 14-13838 Date Filed: 06/23/2015 Page: 8 of 13 what the content of the documents said, or discuss them at all. In fact, these documents were the two notices from the local FPO. The IJ found that “even assuming, arguendo, that [Qiu] had met the first two prongs [of the three-part test], she has failed to satisfy the third prong.” The IJ explained that Qiu had not distinguished her individual case from the BIA’s published decisions in which the BIA had concluded that the record in those cases indicated China did not have a national policy of sterilizing returning Chinese parents of U.S citizen children, but instead penalized them with economic sanctions. Citing the U.S. State Department’s 2011 Country Report on Human Rights Practices in China (“2011 Country Report”), the IJ stated that “[s]poradic reports of forcible abortions and sterilizations, which are unauthorized under Chinese law however, are insufficient to establish a well-founded fear, to say nothing of showing that it is more likely than not that [Qiu] . . . would be subject to forced sterilization.” The IJ found that Qiu’s general background evidence did not show that it was more likely than not that authorities in the Fujian province would forcibly sterilize Qiu individually as the result of her having multiple children in the United States. The IJ noted Qiu’s testimony that her mother and sister-in-law were forcibly sterilized, but stated that “neither of these cases is analogous to this case because those two people were in China, they had never left China, and their children 8 Case: 14-13838 Date Filed: 06/23/2015 Page: 9 of 13 obviously were not born in the United States.” The IJ, however, made no mention of Qiu’s testimony that she had received two notices from her local FPO that she personally was in violation of the family planning policy and that she must report for sterilization, and did not address what credibility or weight, if any, to give the two purported notices in the record at Exhibit 5, tabs P and Q.