Court Opinion

ID: 9430880
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:47.257253+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:57.664988
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion and judgment. Thus, I accept its “narrow” conclusion that “the Immigration Judge and the BIA were incorrect in holding that the [standards for withholding of deportation and granting asylum] are identical.” Ante, at 448. In accordance with this holding, the Court eschews any attempt to give substance to the term “well-founded fear” and leaves that task to the “process of case-by-case adjudication” by the INS, the agency in charge of administering the immigration laws. Ibid. I write separately and briefly to emphasize my understanding that, in its opinion, the Court has directed the INS to the appropriate sources from which the agency should derive the meaning of the “well-founded fear” standard, a meaning that will be refined in later adjudication. This emphasis, I believe, is particularly needed where, as here, an agency’s previous interpretation of the statutory term is so strikingly contrary to plain language and legislative history.
Thus, as the Court observes, ante, at 430-431, the very language of the term “well-founded fear” demands a particular type of analysis — an examination of the subjective feelings of an applicant for asylum coupled with an inquiry into the objective nature of the articulated reasons for the fear. Moreover, in describing how, in the 1980 Act, Congress was attempting to bring this country’s refugee laws into conformity with the United Nations Protocol, the Court notes that the Act’s definition of refugee, wherein the “well-founded fear” term appears, ante, at 427, tracks the language of the *451Protocol. See ante, at 436-437. Such language has a rich history of interpretation in international law and scholarly commentaries. See ante, at 437-440, and nn. 20, 24. While the INS need not ignore other sources of guidance, the above directions by the Court should be significant in the agency’s formulation of the “well-founded fear” standard.
Finally, in my view, the well-reasoned opinions of the Courts of Appeals, that almost uniformly have rejected the INS’s misreading of statutory language and legislative history, provide an admirable example of the very “case-by-case adjudication” needed for the development of the standard. Although the Court refers to a conflict among these courts, see ante, at 426, n. 2, with one exception, see ibid., all the Courts of Appeals that have addressed this question have concluded that the standards for withholding of deportation and granting asylum are not the same. Rather, differences in opinion have arisen as to the precise formulation of the “well-founded fear” standard.* Such differences can arise only when courts or agencies seriously grapple with the problems of developing a standard, whose form is at first given by the statutory language and the intimations of the legislative *452history, but whose final contours are shaped by the application of the standard to the facts of specific cases. The efforts of these courts stand in stark contrast to — but, it is sad to say, alone cannot make up for — the years of seemingly purposeful blindness by the INS, which only now begins its task of developing the standard entrusted to its care.

See, e. g., Carcamo-Flores v. INS, 805 F. 2d 60, 68 (CA2 1986) (“What is relevant is the fear a reasonable person would have, keeping in mind the context of a reasonable person who is facing the possibility of persecution, perhaps including a loss of freedom or even, in some cases, the loss of life”); Guevara-Flores v. INS, 786 F. 2d 1242, 1249 (CA5 1986), cert. pending, No. 86-388 (“An alien possesses a well-founded fear of persecution if a reasonable person in her circumstances would fear persecution if she were to be returned to her native country”); Cardoza-Fonseca v. INS, 767 F. 2d 1448, 1452-1453 (CA9 1985) (case below) (“In contrast, the term ‘well-founded fear’ requires that (1) the alien have a subjective fear, and (2) that this fear have enough of a basis that it can be considered well-founded”); Carvajal-Munoz v. INS, 743 F. 2d 562, 574 (CA7 1984) (“The applicant must present specific facts establishing that he or she has actually been the victim of persecution or has some other good reason to fear that he or she will be singled out for persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion”) (emphasis in original).