Opinion ID: 3000720
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: facts

Text: Fedosseeva entered the United States as a visitor for pleasure and was authorized to stay until March 1994. She overstayed her visa, however, and in 1997 applied for asylum and withholding of removal. Because Fedosseeva’s initial application is not included in the record, we do not know why she first sought asylum. In 1998, she amended her application to claim asylum, not on any of the statutory grounds, see 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A), but because she purportedly cannot return to Latvia or Russia, and thus is “stateless.” Fedosseeva asserted that she could not return to Russia because she never became a Russian citizen after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that she could not return to Latvia because she no longer had a “residence permit.” Fedosseeva attached a translated statement to her amended application, noting that she is not fluent in English. In her application, Fedosseeva stated that she moved with her husband from Russia to Latvia in 1984 and remained there with her daughter after the couple divorced. She found employment at a hotel that served many Russians and eventually was promoted to a management position. Around 1990, when Latvia began moving towards liberation from the Soviet Union, native Latvians became hostile towards ethnic Russians. Fedosseeva said that in April 1991, an employee’s boyfriend, who was a member of the “zemessardze,” a volunteer organization of military reservists similar to a national guard, threatened and assaulted her because she had disciplined the employee. Fedosseeva suffered a nervous breakdown and a No. 06-3216 3 broken wrist as a result of the altercation. Fedosseeva also described a second beating two years later by three men, one dressed as a police officer, who repeatedly kicked her until a nearby bus driver intervened. Approximately a month after the second attack, Latvian police shut off the electricity, gas, and water to her apartment building, and when she tried to turn the gas back on, the police arrested her and fined her the equivalent of $300 for “resisting authority.” In her statement, Fedosseeva also wrote that in 1993, a group of Latvian teenagers harassed and beat her nineyear-old daughter because she is Russian, that the police took no action to assist, and that a Latvian doctor refused to treat her. Fedosseeva eventually decided to leave her daughter with her mother in the Republic of Chechnya in the Russian Federation so she could seek asylum in the United States. At her hearing, Fedosseeva said that her daughter gained citizenship in Russia because she was a minor before the collapse of the Soviet Union. By contrast, Fedosseeva was not eligible for Russian citizenship because she was not a minor and was not residing in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union. In 2003, Fedosseeva hired a new lawyer and filed a third “supplemental” application, attaching a new “Sworn Statement” in English. On this asylum application Fedosseeva marked that she is fluent in English. This application said that Fedosseeva moved to Latvia from Russia when she was “very young” because her father was stationed in the Soviet military there. She said that, since the fall of the Soviet Union, anti-Russian sentiment in Latvia against Soviet military families had grown. She stated that she was married in Latvia but stayed behind with their daughter when her husband emigrated to Germany because her father would not let her leave. She also wrote that when she was a manager at the hotel she was attacked by “some members” of the Latvian home 4 No. 06-3216 guard—not the boyfriend of the employee she described earlier—because she tried to fire a couple of Latvian employees. She explained that on March 8, 1993, she “was jumped by three men; one was dressed as a Latvian police officer,” who beat and kicked her. She attached a transcript of a medical record that stated that she was hospitalized for a week beginning March 8, 1993. She then described an event in which the government shut off the utilities to her building. She defied the government by turning the utilities back on and trying to block officials from coming near, but was subsequently arrested, detained for six hours, and fined the equivalent of $300. In March 2005, Fedosseeva appeared with counsel at her asylum hearing. Though her counsel said at an earlier hearing that Fedosseeva spoke English, she used a translator at the asylum hearing. Fedosseeva conceded removability, but refused to designate a country of removal because she claimed to be stateless. As the only witness at the hearing, Fedosseeva said that she would not seek asylum from Russia because she believed that Russia would not accept her given that she is not a citizen. She testified that she was not a Russian citizen because only people residing in Russia at the time of the fall of the Soviet Union automatically became citizens. She said that she came to the United States using a Soviet passport that was issued in Latvia in 1993, but she did not explain why Latvia was issuing Soviet passports two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. She explained—consistent with her first sworn statement but not her second—that she moved to Latvia in 1984 with her daughter and husband for his job. She also said that Latvian residency laws and her father’s connection to the Soviet military prevented her from becoming a Latvian citizen. Fedosseeva offered no documentary evidence about the residency or citizenship criteria for either Russia or Latvia. No. 06-3216 5 Fedosseeva also testified that she feared for her life if returned to Latvia because she is an ethnic Russian, and she had “several unpleasant incidents” when she last lived there in the early 1990s. She described one such incident that she said took place in 1992 when several men wearing Latvian home guard uniforms approached her and one of them struck her. She testified that she fell and hit her head, but that because she is Russian, when an ambulance arrived the medics refused to do anything more than bandage her shoulder. She said that because the medics in the ambulance did not “really help,” she was forced to get treatment in a nearby “militia station” with medical facilities. Contrary to her 2003 written statement and supporting documents, she testified that she was never hospitalized and returned home after a few hours of treatment. When confronted with her inconsistent statements and supporting documents, she said that she was confused and that maybe the medical reports were for her daughter. However, the medical records listed Fedosseeva’s name. Fedosseeva testified about several other incidents. Specifically, she testified that in 1991 or 1992 the gas, electricity, and water were turned off in her apartment building because, she asserts, the Latvian government did not like that Russians lived there. She said that she turned the gas and electricity back on and guarded the gas pipe with a dog, and had a “very unpleasant dispute” with the police. She said that the police arrested her and fined her the equivalent of $150. Fedosseeva next testified that she was fired from her job at the hotel because she was not fluent in Latvian and because her father was in the Soviet military. The government pointed out, however, that she submitted written documents stating that she consented to being laid off. She did not mention the assault at the hotel that she had described in her earlier applications. 6 No. 06-3216 After the hearing, the IJ found Fedosseeva’s testimony not credible, reasoning that it was “not sufficiently detailed,” “internally inconsistent,” and inconsistent “with the facts she set forth in her first application.” The IJ noted Fedosseeva’s inability to identify consistently when the key events she recounted took place. The IJ also mentioned that her testimony about the beating by Latvian home guard members was not consistent with her application. The IJ further held that Fedosseeva “failed to present the requisite specific, detailed facts” to establish past persecution or a well-founded fear of future persecution in Latvia. The IJ concluded that the attack that she described seemed to be “the act of a rogue national guard member, not the result of any act perpetrated and condoned by the Latvian government.” The IJ also ruled that all of the events that Fedosseeva described amounted only to “harassment by private actors or lawful sanctions imposed by the government for civil disobedience.” Finally, the IJ concluded that Fedosseeva did not have an objectively reasonable fear of future persecution because the events occurred more than a decade earlier and the State Department’s 2004 country report for Latvia noted that, while discrimination against ethnic Russians still exists, the government does not condone it. The IJ commented that Latvian animosity towards Russians was particularly high in the early 1990s because of the Soviet occupation, but the Latvian government has since tried to accommodate different ethnic groups. The IJ noted that according to the 2004 State Department report, fifteen percent of the members of the Latvian Parliament were ethnic Russians, although the general population consists of 28.5% ethnic Russians. See U.S. Dep’t of State, Background Note: Latvia (Dec. 2006), available at http://www. state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5378.htm (last visited June 14, 2007)). Moreover, the IJ emphasized the fact that the governNo. 06-3216 7 ment investigates all claims of human-rights violations. Id. Consequently, the IJ ruled that Fedosseeva did not qualify for asylum or withholding of removal and that she should be removed either to Latvia or Russia. Fedosseeva appealed to the BIA, which affirmed the IJ’s conclusions in a brief order.