Biao Yang probably isn’t the first man to tell an exaggerated story about his courage in defense of a woman’s honor. Similarly self-aggrandizing stories have no doubt been told in countless bars and around hundreds of water coolers.
Narrative license of this sort usually carries little risk. A drinking buddy or co-worker might express disbelief by making reference to bovine excrement.
But the personal consequences of Yang’s embellishments are far more serious, as they will likely result in his deportation and the imposition of a lifetime bar to future immigration benefits. The consequences of Yang’s narrative excesses also had a broader effect, as they were the focus of a recent BIA decision that added to the administrative corpus of immigration law by clarifying the standards under which asylum claims are determined to have been made frivolously.
TOUGH GUY
Yang, a Chinese national, arrived in Chicago in 2002. After touching down, he told immigration officials at O’Hare that he had fled his country because “family planning authorities” – bureaucrats tasked with enforcing the country’s “One Child” policies – had forced his girlfriend to abort her pregnancy and that they wanted to arrest him.
The embellishments would come in an asylum application filed 18 months later. In that application, Yang asserted that he got into a scuffle with and injured one of the abortionist bureaucrats who had come to his house to escort his girlfriend to the hospital. He further claimed to have been beaten and detained for his fearless acts. And then he claimed that he made a prison break and left the country.
IJ DECISION AND SECOND CIRCUIT REMAND
None of these details had been mentioned during the airport interview, however. This and other suspicious aspects of Yang’s story – including chronological discrepancies , “rank inconsistencies” within his testimony, and the sheer “implausibility” of his prison-break story – led an immigration judge to render an “adverse credibility determination.”
The result was denial of Yang’s asylum claim. But the IJ further held that these inconsistencies indicated that Yang’s asylum claim had been filed frivolously – which resulted in the imposition of a lifetime bar to future immigration benefits.
The IJ’s decision was affirmed by the BIA. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit remanded because the case exposed vagueness in the existing BIA standard for making a “frivolousness” determination. Those standards included:
[A] specific finding by the Immigration Judge or the Board that the alien knowingly filed a frivolous application … [and] … sufficient evidence in the record to support the finding that a material element of the asylum application was deliberately fabricated
The Second Circuit examined:
to what extent the IJ is required to set out his or her factual findings to support a frivolousness determination separately from the adverse credibility determination and to what extent he or she is permitted to incorporate by reference the findings made to support an adverse credibility determination.
BIA CLARIFICATIONS
On remand, Matter of B-Y-, 25 I&N Dec. 236 (BIA 2010), the BIA made the following clarifications:
Factual findings made in reaching an adverse credibility determination can be incorporated into the findings made in reaching a frivolousness determination … but will not be sufficient … the frivolousness determination requires additional, explicit findings of “materiality” and “deliberate fabrication.”
The BIA stated:
In this case, as is often the situation, fact-finding regarding credibility overlaps with fact-finding as to whether an asylum application was frivolously filed. Both determinations involve the identification of inconsistencies and discrepancies in the asylum claim and consideration of any explanations offered for them. There may be circumstances where the pertinent facts do not overlap, and separate factual findings by an Immigration Judge will be necessary.
However, neither fairness nor clarity requires an Immigration Judge to separate and repeat those aspects of the credibility determination that overlap with the frivolousness determination.
… The frivolousness determination, however, requires explicit findings as to “materiality” and “deliberate fabrication” that are not required for an adverse credibility determination. As we indicated in Matter of Y-L-, 24 I&N Dec. at 156, “[T]he Immigration Judge must separately address the question of frivolousness, including a discussion of the evidence supporting a finding that the respondent deliberately fabricated a material element of the asylum claim.”