Court Opinion

ID: 9487778
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:26:09.260641+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:28.728641
License: Public Domain

NOONAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Giedrius Leo Kazlauskas petitions this court to review the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (the Board) denying him asylum. The Board adopted the decision and the reasoning of the Immigration Judge (IJ). We review the Board, but by the terms of its decision we are referred to the decision and reasoning of the IJ. The IJ’s reasoning is far from clear. He acknowledges that under Matter of Chen, 20 I & N Dec., Int. Dec. 3104 (BIA 1989), an applicant for asylum may establish eligibility by presenting evidence of past persecution, as Kazlauskas sought to do. The IJ believed the testimony of Kazlauskas but ruled that there was no proof “that he has ever been sought out for persecution by the former Soviet Union or its government or apparatuses.” In reaching *908this conclusion the IJ ignored Kazlauskas’ testimony that at school he was subjected to harassment by teachers because of his religious beliefs and his mother’s testimony that for a period of 12 years, from 1963 to 1975, his parents were annually put under house arrest for a period of days with the effect that they were political prisoners and did not have any friends. The teachers at school and those agents of the state who held his family under arrest were officials of the Soviet Union. As the IJ believed Kazlauskas and his mother, and as no other evidence was presented, the IJ had no basis for rejecting their testimony that Kazlauskas suffered persecution from the government when he was in Lithuania.
The IJ went on to find that there was no evidence that Kazlauskas would be persecuted by the present government of Lithuania. The IJ added: “The respondent has had difficulties with the laws of this country, numerous convictions for burglary, alcohol abuse. Although there appears to be rehabilitation on that part, these are factors that mitigate (sic) against the respondent’s case to be granted as a matter of discretion, even if he had been found to have established a well-founded fear of persecution in the past or the present.”
A proper analysis by the IJ on the basis of the undisputed testimony would have been that Kazlauskas’ past persecution by the Soviet government in Lithuania made him eligible for asylum. Acewicz v. INS, 984 F.2d 1056 (9th Cir.1993); Desir v. Ilchert, 840 F.2d 723, 729 (9th Cir.1988). The IJ was then in a position in which he could have exercised discretion not to grant asylum. Acewicz, 984 F.2d at 1056. However, in the exercise of discretion the IJ was bound to look at all the factors in the case including those favorable to the petitioner. Shahandeh-Pey v. I.N.S., 831 F.2d 1384, 1387-88 (7th Cir.1987). The factors favorable to Ka-zlauskas were not only rehabilitation from his teen-age abuse of alcohol — a rehabilitation noted somewhat disparagingly by the IJ— but also the evidence that he had worked full-time for the past two years; that he had plans for marriage in the United States; that he supports his mother financially; that he had registered for the Selective Service; that he had paid income taxes since 1982; and that for the past 18 months he had volunteered for about eight hours each Sunday at a recovery house to help “young people stay away from alcohol.” The IJ also should have observed that only through his suffering from the disease of alcoholism at the age of 16 did he fail to be included with his mother when she received political asylum and that the “numerous convictions for burglary” amounted to two court appearances in the period April-May 1983 when Kazlauskas was nineteen years old and still suffering from his disease. We have long recognized that chronic addiction to alcohol is an illness not a crime. Griffis v. Weinberger, 509 F.2d 837, 838 (9th Cir.1975). A fair reading of the burglary convictions connects them with the illness which he then suffered. Finally, the IJ should have considered the hardship that Kazlauskas’ deportation would inflict upon his mother, who is now lawfully admitted to the United States and who depends heavily upon him for financial support, companionship and family affection. Campos-Granillo v. INS, 12 F.3d 849, 852 (9th Cir.1993), amended 94 C.D.O.S. 1131 (9th Cir. Feb. 16, 1994)
The Board, affirming the IJ without any effort to redo his inadequate work, achieved a severe result. We should, and could, do better.