Opinion ID: 1354339
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Disfavored group analysis in asylum cases

Text: We begin by briefly reviewing the development, in the asylum context, of what has come to be calledperhaps unfortunately, as the terminology may be misleading disfavored group analysis. We first recognized the evidentiary relevance of an asylum applicant's membership in a disfavored group in Kotasz v. INS, 31 F.3d 847 (9th Cir.1994). Kotasz explained that although the asylum regulations provide two ways to establish a well-founded fear of future persecutionshowing a pattern or practice of persecution, or showing a likelihood of being individually singled out, see 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(2)(iii) these two categories of future-fear claims should not be understood to require discrete sorts of evidence. As Kotasz emphasized, [g]roup membership is an aspect of nearly all asylum claims, not a special problem limited to pattern or practice cases. Id. at 853. Indeed, Kotasz noted, the most common individualized persecution scenario is one in which, although members of the disfavored group[ ] are not threatened by [a pattern or practice of] systematic persecution of the group's entire membership, the fact of group membership nonetheless places [the individual] at some risk. Id. The singled out path is not reserved solely for those applicants whose would-be persecutors seek them out personally, by name. Rather, Kotasz recognized that one's chances of being singled out from the general population and subjected to persecution is often strongly correlated with the frequency with which others who share the same disfavored characteristics are mistreated and persecuted. So, in a case in which the asylum applicant attempts to show that he faces a reasonable likelihood of being singled out individually on account of a protected characteristic, [p]roof that the government or other persecutor has discriminated against a group to which [he] belongs is ... always relevant, because that proof says something about the chances that he, as a member of that group, will be persecuted. [10] Id. Based on this common-sense evidentiary proposition, Kotasz held that once an applicant establishes that he is a member of a group that is broadly disfavored, the more egregious the showing of group persecutionthe greater the risk to all members of the groupthe less evidence of individualized persecution must be adduced to meet the objective prong of a well-founded fear showing. Id. (emphases added); see also Mgoian, 184 F.3d at 1035 n. 4. Since Kotasz, we have found petitioners from a number of groups to have established that they are members of disfavored groups for asylum purposes. See, e.g., El Himri v. Ashcroft, 378 F.3d 932, 937 (9th Cir.2004) (stateless Palestinians born in Kuwait); Hoxha v. Ashcroft, 319 F.3d 1179, 1182-83 (9th Cir.2003) (ethnic Albanians in Kosovo); Singh v. INS, 94 F.3d 1353, 1359-60 (9th Cir.1996) (ethnic Indians in Fiji). We first applied disfavored group analysis to the asylum claim of a member of Indonesia's Chinese Christian minority in Sael v. Ashcroft, 386 F.3d 922 (9th Cir.2004). In Sael, we found that the record evidence, documenting centuries of popular and official discrimination against the Chinese and Christian minorities in Indonesia, establishe[d] that ethnic Chinese are significantly disfavored in Indonesia. 386 F.3d at 927. Accordingly, Sael, as a Chinese Christian woman, had to demonstrate a `comparatively low' level of individualized risk in order to prove that she ha[d] a well-founded fear of future persecution. Id. We concluded that Sael met her burden of showing individualized risk by adducing evidence of her past personal experiences of threats, vandalism, and threatened violence by native Indonesians. Id. at 927-29. These experiences, even [though] not sufficient to compel a finding of past persecution, were indicative of individualized risk [of future harm]. Id. at 928-29. When viewed in the context of the country-conditions evidence of widespread discrimination against Chinese Christians, Sael's evidence of individualized risk compelled the conclusion that her own fear of future persecution was objectively well-founded. Id. at 929.