Attorney General Sets Standards for 'Family' as a 'Particular Social Group'
And reiterates his authority to interpret immigration laws
By Andrew R. Arthur on August 5, 2019
As my colleague Dan Cadman noted in a July 30, 2019, post, on July 29, 2019, Attorney General (AG) William Barr issued a decision in Matter of L-E-A-, which reversed a key finding of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) that a family can form a "particular social group" (PSG) for purposes of meeting the test for asylum eligibility. In that decision, the AG both provided bright-line rules for adjudicators to follow in determining when a "family" constitutes a PSG for asylum purposes (which will speed adjudications) and, importantly, reiterated his authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to "constru[e] and apply[] provisions in the immigration laws."
By way of background, section 208 gives the attorney general the authority to grant asylum to any alien who has applied for that protection "if the Attorney General determines that such alien is a refugee within the meaning of section 101(a)(42)(A)" of the INA.
Section 101(a)(42)(A) of the INA, in turn, defines the term "refugee" as:
[A]ny person who is outside any country of such person's nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Attorney-General-Sets-Standards-Family-Particular-Social-Group
