Opinion ID: 781977
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Substantial Evidence and the Whole Record

Text: 60 The BIA's mistaken analyses of vagueness and corroboration represent sufficient grounds for us to vacate the BIA's order and remand this case for a new hearing. In the interest of judicial economy, given our remand, we will, however, also address other ways in which the BIA decision ran afoul of our Circuit's immigration-law precedents. 61
62 The BIA's decision depended on some factual determinations that are not supported by substantial evidence. The first was its holding that the fine receipt was not creditable because its denomination was in dollars. In so ruling, the BIA ignored Qiu's testimony that he was fined 1000 yuan, and the Board offered no basis for thinking that the Chinese characters on the receipt (a copy of which was submitted into evidence) signify American dollars rather than the local currency. Translator oversight is the patently obvious explanation for the dollar denomination of the translated receipt. And, in fact, the government, in its brief to this Court, concedes that the reference to dollars appears to be a translation error. 63 The BIA's second fact-finding error was its conclusion that the Chinese government did not believe that Qiu had two children at the time that he and his wife ostensibly fled to Tungto. From this the BIA inferred that the threat of forced abortion and sterilization that supposedly prompted their flight was not genuine. 12 64 The sole explanation that the BIA gave for not accepting Qiu's version of the flight to Tungto, in 1981, is not based on a generic doubt about credibility. 13 Rather, it is that Qiu's 1993 household registry did not include his first son. Though Qiu testified that he listed this child with his brother last year (i.e., in 1993), the BIA speculated that Qiu must have recorded this child with his brother before then, because it is unclear how all four [children] could have been registered previously [on Qiu's registry] without a problem. From this the Board concluded that in 1981 during the pregnancy and birth of the third child the government would only have been aware of two of the applicant's children which, according to the applicant, was acceptable. 65 But this inference is not supported by substantial evidence. There is no record evidence or testimony that Qiu listed the child on his brother's registry before 1993. As for the BIA's supposition that if four children had been listed on Qiu's registry before 1993, Qiu would have had problems, the record shows that Qiu did have problems. At the very least, his family was fined in 1985 for violating birth control policies. 14 Far from being grounded in record evidence, the inference at issue (extrapolating from Qiu's statement that he listed his eldest child on his brother's registry in 1993, to conclude that birth control officials did not know of Qiu's two children in 1981), dangles from a chain of flimsy speculations. 66
67 The BIA's ruling did not mention Qiu's testimony regarding the smashing up of his home by the birth control team, the exclusion of his fourth child from school and from food subsidies, and Qiu's 1981 dismissal from his job, all of which, Qiu alleges, occurred because of his family's violation of population policies—and all of which fit the pattern of family planning enforcement as described by the State Department report. 15 It cannot be said that these events are too insignificant to merit discussion. Cf. Douglas v. INS, 28 F.3d at 244. To the contrary, (1) they might be thought incidents of persecution on account of resistance to the population control policy, see 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42), and (2) they further suggest that China was vigorously pursuing its population policy with respect to Qiu and his family. 16 68