Opinion ID: 781977
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Qiu's Illegal Entry

Text: 3 Qiu, a citizen of China and former resident of Fujian Province, attempted to enter the United States illegally on December 29, 1992. He was intercepted by INS agents and, since he did not possess a valid, unexpired visa or travel document, he was charged with excludability under the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. §§ 1182(a)(7)(A)(i)(I), (B)(i)(I), and (B)(i)(II). The following April, Qiu, assisted by counsel, applied for asylum and for withholding of deportation. His hearing took place almost a year and a half later, on September 2, 1994. B. Proceedings Before the Immigration Judge 4 The hearing began with Qiu submitting into evidence a copy of his household registry, a certificate of sterilization, a fine payment receipt, English translations of these items, and, by way of background material, a New York Times article and a State Department report on China's birth control program, as carried out in Fujian Province. Speaking through an interpreter (who rendered Qiu's testimony into ungrammatical, hard-to-follow English), Qiu testified that he was born and raised in Fujian Province, and that he had received two-and-a-half years of formal education. He married his present wife in 1976, but, as the newlyweds were too young, the authorities refused to register the marriage. Qiu's wife bore four children, the first two at the family's home in Fujian, the third in Tungto Town, and the fourth in Fuzhou. When Qiu's wife became pregnant with their third child, she and Qiu, fearing forced abortion and sterilization, fled to Tungto and hid there with his wife's family until the third child was born. Qiu found work in a garment factory, but was fired after his wife refused to abort the third child. Confronted by Qiu as to the reason for the dismissal, the head of the garment factory confirmed that Qiu's spouse's failure to report for an abortion was, in fact, the cause. He further stated that she would have to be sterilized for Qiu to reclaim his position. 5 Qiu then moved to Fuzhou, sixty kilometers from his home village, where he was able to secure manual employment. There, in 1985, his wife gave birth to their fourth child. After the birth, Qiu and his wife returned home, where his wife was arrested, taken away by force, sterilized against her will, and then fined for violating birth control policies. Her captors consisted of birth control officers, committee members, and brigade cadres. Qiu explained that the birth control team came through his village periodically, usually in October, demanding sterilizations. Up until 1985, Qiu and his wife had managed to evade the birth control team by going into hiding during the roundups. But they paid a price for their evasions. Qiu testified that the team would knock at his door and, finding no one home, would force their way in and smash[] everything they can find into pieces. (It is not clear from Qiu's testimony whether this happened once or repeatedly.) 6 Qiu purported to corroborate his version of events with a sterilization certificate in his wife's name, dated October 15, 1985, and a receipt, dated October 30, 1985, for a 1000-yuan fine paid for violating China's one-child limit. Additional support came from the State Department report, which indicated that China enforced its family size rules in Qiu's province with annual or biannual passes through the villages, much as Qiu had testified. 7 Two years after his wife's sterilization, Qiu made up his mind to leave China. A final incident prompted his departure: after a fire had swept through his neighborhood, destroying his and many other homes, Chinese officials gave most of the residents supplies sufficient to rebuild four-story structures, but Qiu received enough only for a two-story home, and he was relegated to a singularly poor building site. This mistreatment he attributed to his family background. It is not clear what Qiu meant by family background. At one point, he suggested that he was deprived of building materials because his father had cracked a joke about Mao back in 1966, for which his father had lost his position and had been forced to attend study class. But Qiu also testified that in denying him building materials, local officials explained that they had to take care of the lowest poor and lower peasants first. (Qiu characterized his family background as rich peasant.) 8 Qiu finished presenting his case by explaining that were he sent back to China, he could be jailed or fined for leaving the country without the government's permission. 9 The INS attorney began his examination of Qiu by posing a number of questions about why Qiu chose to leave China and how he obtained passage to the United States. The attorney then had Qiu state for the record the amount of the fine paid for birth control violations. Qiu replied, One thousand yuan, y-u-a-n. (The translation of the fine receipt submitted into evidence was denominated in dollars rather than yuan.) Except for clarifying the amount of the fine, the INS attorney did not try to elicit details about Qiu's experiences under China's birth control policies. The attorney did ask for proof of Qiu's marriage; there followed a partially off-the-record exchange about the household registry that Qiu had submitted into evidence, which seems to have allayed the attorney's doubts. That was the extent of INS questioning. 10 The IJ then posed a question of his own. He observed that the 1993 household registry showed only three children and asked Qiu to explain the discrepancy. Qiu said that last year (i.e., in 1993) he had listed his eldest child in his brother's household registry, apparently hoping that this would lead public authorities to believe him to have only three children. Even so, Qiu's family suffered for its size. Thus, prompted by his attorney, Qiu indicated that Chinese officials had refused to place a seal on the youngest child's entry in the 1993 household registry, because Qiu had too many children. This prevented Qiu's youngest child from attending school and deprived that child of food rations. The IJ then asked a few questions about Qiu's sister, who was listed in the registry but without a seal; about Qiu's father's treatment as a political prisoner; and about local officials' explanation for Qiu's allotment of building materials following the 1987 fire. Like the INS attorney, the Immigration Judge did not try to elicit details about the application of China's population laws to Qiu and his family. C. The Immigration Judge's Decision 11 After concluding his questioning and confirming that the attorneys for Qiu and the INS had nothing further to add, the IJ recited his ruling from the bench. He explained that Qiu had failed to show either past persecution or a reasonable fear of future persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, and therefore was not eligible for asylum. ( A fortiori, Qiu could not show the higher clear probability of impending persecution requisite to a withholding of deportation.) The IJ considered and rejected three possible bases for asylum: the events of 1966 (relating to Qiu's father's troubles), Qiu's fear of punishment for having left China illegally, and the misfortunes suffered by Qiu and his wife due to China's population-control policies. 12 First, the judge held that Qiu could not show a proper nexus between his father's quip about Mao and any subsequent adversities. Qiu had not drawn into doubt the official explanation that his allocation of building materials after the fire reflected his rich peasant family background. 13 As for Qiu's stated fear of future persecution for leaving China illegally, the court held that under Matter of Nagy, 11 I. & N. Dec. 888, 1966 WL 14392 (BIA 1966), such punishment is prosecution, not persecution, unless the defendant is singled out for more severe treatment, an eventuality in support of which Qiu did not testify. 14 Finally, the judge found incredible Qiu's testimony about his family size and forced sterilization. Qiu's testimony regarding the circumstances of his wife's arrest and forced sterilization was not sufficiently detailed to be worthy of belief, and, further, the certificate of sterilization that Qiu had submitted into evidence was not properly authenticated or sufficient to make a finding of a forced sterilization. Even if the certificate were authentic, the judge continued, it would only show that Qiu's wife had been sterilized, and (according to the State Department) many Chinese mothers opted voluntarily for sterilization, in exchange for benefits from the government. 15 As to family size, the IJ noted an apparent inconsistency between Qiu's account of what had happened to him and the State Department's report on practices in rural China. According to the State Department, the IJ said, two children are allowed without fines in rural areas. But, the judge reasoned, if Qiu had hidden the identity of his first child from the government, then following the birth of his third child, the government would have thought him to have only two children, and therefore would not have imposed a fine. 16 In closing, the IJ invoked Matter of Chang, Int. Dec. No. 3107, 1989 WL 247513 (BIA 1989), which held that an individual claiming asylum on account of the one-couple, one-child policy must establish that the application of the policy to him was persecutive on its face, or that he has a well-founded fear that he would be persecuted due to selective application of the policy to religious groups, or to punish political opinions, etc. The judge observed that Qiu had not shown that he had been singled out on some illicit ground, or punished for publicly opposing the policy. 1 17 D. Events Following the Immigration Judge's Decision 18 On September 9, 1994, a week after the IJ's ruling, Qiu filed a notice of appeal to the BIA. The notice identified two grounds for the appeal: first, that the IJ's decision was not backed by substantial evidence; and, second, that the IJ had relied on an incorrect legal standard — that of Matter of Chang, a decision said to have been overruled by various executive orders and administrative rules. Qiu's November 1994 appellate brief focused on the status of Matter of Chang, and argued that individuals harmed by coercive family planning policies are per-se eligible for asylum on account of political opinion. The government's brief, dated December 1994, sought summary dismissal under Matter of Chang or, in the alternative, affirmance on the ground that substantial evidence supported the IJ's decision. 19 Several months after the parties filed their briefs with the BIA, we decided Zhang v. Slattery, 55 F.3d 732 (2d Cir. 1995), in which we considered and rejected the argument that Matter of Chang had been superseded by statute, executive order, or administrative decision. But, in 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), section § 601(a)(1) of which amends the immigration laws to make the nondiscriminatory application of coercive population controls a legal basis for asylum and for withholding of deportation. See Pub.L. No. 104-208, § 601(a)(1), 110 Stat. 3009-698 (1996) (current version at 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)). 20 Long after this change in the law, on November 30, 2000, the BIA issued its rejection of Qiu's appeal. E. The BIA's Decision 21 The BIA ruled that substantial evidence supported the IJ's decision. In so holding, the BIA did not accept the IJ's characterization of Qiu's hearing testimony as incredible. To the contrary, it criticized that conclusion, but also stated that Qiu's testimony (presumably, even if credible) was insufficiently detailed to satisfy his burden of proof. 2 22 Two sets of events that might be thought to comprise past persecution within the meaning of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as revised by the IIRIRA, were considered and rejected: the threats of forced abortion and sterilization that, Qiu avers, caused him and his wife to flee to Tungto during her third pregnancy; and the allegedly forced sterilization of Qiu's wife—together with the fine — following the birth of their fourth child. The first event the BIA called into doubt because of Qiu's registration of his first child on his brother's household registry. [I]f the first child was registered with the applicant's brother, reads the opinion, then in 1981 during the pregnancy and birth of the third child the government would have only been aware of two of the applicant's children which, according to the applicant, was acceptable, and his wife would not have been sought for an abortion or sterilization at that time. As for the forced sterilization, the BIA simply stated that the evidence does not establish that the applicant's wife was forced to have the operation against her will. Though she was fined soon thereafter, the fact that the fine assessed was stated in terms of dollars instead of Chinese currency raises doubts as to its authenticity. Summing up, the BIA concluded that the applicant's general and vague testimony regarding his alleged persecution was not remedied by a showing of specific and detailed corroborative evidence. 23 F. The Arguments on Appeal from the BIA's Decision 24 Qiu proposes three grounds for this Court to vacate or reverse the decision of the Board. First, he claims that the Board's decision violates due process, in that the Board failed to remand the case to the IJ for additional fact-finding in light of the IIRIRA's new basis for refugee status. (At oral argument, Qiu's attorney conceded that our recent decision in Guan Shan Liao v. U.S. Dept. of Justice, 293 F.3d 61 (2d Cir.2002) precludes this line of attack, on the facts of the present case. Therefore we will not further consider the due-process theory.) Second, Qiu argues that the Board's decision must fail because the Board unreasonably demanded corroborative evidence and specific testimony, and because the Board's decision was not supported by substantial evidence in the record as a whole. Third, Qiu suggests that the Immigration Judge violated a duty to help him develop his case, and that because neither the IJ nor the attorney representing the INS probed into or cast doubt upon Qiu's statements regarding the adversities that he and his family suffered in China, those statements must be taken as true. 25 The INS maintains that substantial evidence supports the Board's rejection of Qiu's testimony as unacceptably vague and as lacking in corroboration; that the Board's decision not to remand in light of the IIRIRA did not violate due process; and that neither the INS attorney nor the IJ had any obligation to assist Qiu in developing his case. 26 For the reasons stated below, we vacate the BIA's decision and remand with instructions that the BIA, in turn, remand Qiu's case to an IJ for another hearing. 3