Opinion ID: 2999548
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Lin

Text: Lin entered the United States without a valid visa in February 1996 and was immediately arrested. In her first statement to immigration officials at her airport interview, she said she had come to live with her father (who came to this country seeking asylum in 1993) and that she wanted “the opportunity to advance [her]self.” She petitioned for political asylum in July, claiming that she feared persecution because of her parents’ resistance to the one-child policy and because her father had twice “tried to escape from China.” She stated that her mother was forced to have an abortion in 1980 and was later sterilized against her will, and that her father was sterilized while in prison in 1983 as punishment for attempting to leave the country. At the hearing before the IJ, Lin testified that she came to the United States because she wanted to avoid the persecution her parents had suffered and because her father had been seriously injured in a traffic accident and needed her care. She did not contend that she herself had suffered any harm under the one-child policy, but she expressed fear that if returned either she or Chen would be sterilized for violating the family-planning laws. Lin also claimed that she sought asylum because she wanted to have more children and because she was afraid of be- ing imprisoned and fined for leaving the country illegally. No. 04-1126 5 The IJ determined that neither Chen nor Lin had suffered past persecution, and that together they failed to demonstrate a well-founded fear of future persecution. He refused to credit Chen’s account of his expulsion from school or his former girlfriend’s forced abortion, and further determined that his allegations, even if true, did not amount to persecution as a matter of law. In addition, the IJ rejected as too speculative to be well founded both petitioners’ fears that they would be subject to future persecution because of the birth of their second child. The BIA agreed with the IJ that Chen and Lin failed to meet their burdens of establishing eligibility for asylum.