A new report by TRAC, a group that collects information on immigration cases, finds that the backlog in Immigration Courts is worse than ever:
The number of cases awaiting resolution before the Immigration Courts reached a new all-time high of 242,776 at the end of March 2010, according to very timely government enforcement data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). The case backlog has continued to grow — up 6.3 percent — since TRAC’s last report four months ago, and nearly a third higher (30.4%) than levels a mere 18 months ago.
"Is it time for my immigration hearing yet?"
The backlog has resulted in longer delays in Immigration Court:
Wait times have also continued to inch upward. The average time these pending cases have been waiting in the Immigration Courts of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) is now 443 days.
The longest delays are in California, where the average wait time is 627 days. TRAC blames the delays mainly on an insufficient number of IJs. I’ve discussed that issue before (We Need More Judges). In a recent exchange with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), that group argued that aliens are largly to blame for delays since they abuse the system to prolong (or completely avoid) removal. Maybe I will devote a future blog post to the reasons for delay, but for now, it seems the wait times are longer than ever and there is little relief in sight.
Under INA § 235(b), an alien who appears at the border and claims asylum or expresses a fear of persecution must be interviewed. The Refugee Protection Act would require DHS to record these interviews.
A DHS employee demonstrates the agency's latest recording equipment
Currently, asylum interviews at the border (or the airport) are generally not recorded. As a result, there are often disputes about what the alien said at the interview. For example, I worked on a case recently where an Ethiopian asylum seeker entered the United States at the Mexican border. He was immediately detained and requested asylum. His friend and traveling companion served as my client’s interpreter. The Border Patrol agent wrote down the client’s responses to the agent’s questions. The written statement was not consistent with my client’s statements in court, and the IJ found the client’s testimony incredible; she denied asylum. On appeal, the BIA reversed and remanded the case for, among other things, a more thorough examination of what happened at the border. Had the border conversation been recorded, the IJ could have more definitively determined whether an inconsistency existed, and could have made a more accurate credibility determination.
IJs often rely on prior inconsistent statements to make adverse credibility findings, and I have worked on a number of cases where prior statements were used for impeachment purposes. Such statements are often not recorded (neither the Border Patrol nor the Asylum Office records interviews). Thus, the accuracy of the prior statements is frequently an issue. If the interviews were recorded, we would have a more accurate record, and hence, more accurate credibility determinations. The RPA provides for recorded interviews at the border. It should also provide for recorded interviews at the Asylum Office.
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.
Poster extolling the virtues of the one child policy
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.
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.”
USCIS Asylum Division will hold its quarterly stakeholders meeting in Washington, DC on June 8, 2010 at 2:00 PM. For details about attending the meeting, RSVP information, and how to submit questions, view the USCIS Memo. Questions are due by close of business on May 21, 2010, and RSVPs are due by close of busines on June 4, 2010.
A recent decision by the Ninth Circuit reveals how attorney error can destroy an alien’s asylum case.
In Singh v. Holder, No. 08-70434 (9th Cir. April 19, 2010), the Ninth Circuit concluded that an IJ may require corroborating evidence even where an alien has testified credibly. In the underlying case, the question before the IJ was whether Mr. Singh had filed for asylum within one year of his arrival in the United States (in general, an alien who does not file for asylum within one year of arriving in the U.S. is ineligible for asylum). The IJ found that Mr. Singh testified credibly about his arrival date in the U.S., but the IJ concluded that Mr. Singh had failed to prove his entry date by “clear and convincing” evidence because he did not submit any additional evidence of his entry date.
The Ninth Circuit found that the IJ could require corroboration of the entry date. The Court held:
With section 1158(b)(1)(B)(ii) [the REAL ID Act], Congress has expressly empowered the IJ to require corroborating evidence even when the applicant has provided otherwise credible testimony. Should the applicant fail to offer corroboration, the IJ may conclude that despite the applicant’s credible testimony, he has failed to meet his burden of demonstrating that he is entitled to asylum relief. Accordingly, the IJ’s conclusion that Singh’s uncorroborated testimony was insufficient to carry his burden to prove his date of entry was proper.
This result is not that surprising. The REAL ID Act, which went into effect on May 11, 2005, provides that, “Where the trier of fact determines that the applicant should provide evidence that corroborates otherwise credible testimony, such evidence must be provided unless the applicant does not have the evidence and cannot reasonably obtain the evidence.” In Singh, the Court concluded that evidence corroborating Mr. Singh’s entry date was readily available:
This is the sort of fact which is “easily subject to verification,'” whether by some form of official documentation or by supporting documents of a more informal variety, i.e., affidavits or letters from family, friends, or traveling companions.Travelers typically accumulate paper as they move, such as receipts from gas stations, motels, and restaurants, and often take snapshots providing dating information, and reaching a refuge from persecution might well generate a particular desire to preserve souvenirs of arrival. Accordingly, it is eminently “reasonable to expect” an applicant to provide some corroborating evidence of his date of entry
While I am not sure I agree that people fleeing persecution “typically accumulate paper as they move,” Mr. Singh should at least have tried to get evidence concerning his entry. Had he made an effort to obtain corroboration, he would likely have satisfied the REAL ID Act’s requirement to either obtain the evidence or demonstrate that the evidence is not reasonably available.
The REAL ID Act went into effect in 2005. According to the Ninth Circuit decision, the IJ informed Mr. Singh’s counsel at an initial hearing to obtain evidence concerning the date of entry. Either Mr. Singh’s attorney asked his client for the evidence or he did not. If he asked and Mr. Singh failed to make any effort to obtain the evidence, then Mr. Singh is to blame for the loss. If the attorney failed to instruct Mr. Singh to get evidence, then the attorney is to blame.
The Ninth Circuit found that an IJ could not rely on her own notes, taken during an unrecorded bond hearing, to support a conclusion that an alien’s testimony was not credible. See Joseph v. Holder, No. 05-74,390 (9th Cir. April 14, 2010).
Below is the story of an asylee from Eritrea. She prefers to keep her name confidential:
I was born in 1979 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I was an Ethiopian at birth but I am an Eritrean national.
Eritrea is a little known country in East Africa of about 5 million people. Eritrea was forcefully annexed with Ethiopia in 1962. Freedom fighters struggled for Eritrea’s independence against the Derg, the Ethiopian government from 1974 to 1991. The struggle ended in 1991, when the freedom fighters won the fight. A referendum was held in 1993. Eritreans overwhelmingly voted to be independent from Ethiopia. My parents decided it was time to move to Eritrea. We moved to Eritrea for good in 1993.
The Beauty of Culture by Eritrean artist Yosief Indrias I came to the U.S. on August 10, 2007, a year after I left my country. I left my country in August 2006. I won a scholarship to pursue higher studies in Geneva, Switzerland. While in Geneva, I received a tuition waiver to study at a university in Washington, DC.
I am an Evangelical Christian. While I went to Evangelical Christian churches since I was a child, I did not become a devoted Evangelical Christian until March 2005. Unfortunately, that was after the faith was banned in Eritrea and when hundreds of evangelical Christians were thrown in jail for their faith. In 2001, the government declared that only Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran and Islam were complying churches. All other faiths, including Evangelical/Pentecostals, Jehovah Witnesses, Bahai, and Seventh Day Adventists, were declared non-compliant faiths and banned.
Going to Bible or Prayer cells in houses or even carrying the Bible could lead to arrest, detention or even death in some cases. That did not stop my desire to attend Bible study and prayer meetings. I was eager to learn God’s Word and become a mature Christian. I went to a friend’s house to pray and study the Bible.
At the time I left Eritrea, the government imprisoned hundreds of Evangelical Christians. The government did not show any signs of stopping the persecution against Evangelical Christians. I was too afraid to go back home when I finished my studies in the United States. I talked to a couple of my professors about my intention to apply for asylum. They strongly advised me against applying for asylum without legal representation. One of my professors talked to the Immigration Clinic of the Law School. The clinic contacted me and set up an appointment to interview me. Two interns at the clinic interviewed me and made copies of my documents.
About a week later, the clinic notified me that it would take my case and represent me in my asylum application. I was relieved to hear that news. My next concern was to get my asylum application filed before the one year dead line. I had only a few weeks to write my affidavit, gather documents and mail the package. I had more interviews with the interns at the clinic to write my affidavit. After the affidavit was ready, the package was mailed on August 1, 2008, just a few days before the one year deadline.
The next step was to wait for my fingerprint appointment. I had my fingerprints taken on August 21. Because the interns that prepared my application finished their internship at the end of August, the professor asked for a continuance of my asylum interview, which was originally set for the beginning of September. My interview was rescheduled for September 15, 2008. Another intern was assigned to be my student council. I had a moot interview with the clinic team a few days before my interview. The moot helped me to get prepared for the interview. I felt less anxious about the interview at the asylum office.
Then came September 15. I arrived at the asylum office early. I met the professor and the student counsel outside the building. My interview was scheduled at 9:00 AM. The three of us got up to the third floor. We sat in the waiting room. Almost three hours went by before the asylum officer called me. The long wait made me nervous.
Around 11:50, I was called by the asylum officer. We followed her to the interview room. After the oath was administered, the officer started to ask me questions. She typed my answers to her questions. She asked me questions for an hour and a half. I had not anticipated some of the questions but I had a feeling it went well. The officer told me the decision will be sent to me by mail in about two weeks.
A month and a half went by before I heard anything from the asylum office. I was very anxious to know the decision. When I get home from work, the first thing I did was to go to the kitchen table to see if anything came in the mail for me. I was so happy when I finally got the good news. It was a huge relief. I did not have to go back to my country and risks persecution from the government of Eritrea.
My getting asylum in the United States was wonderful news. However, my personal life got a little complicated because of it. My fiancé had proposed to me after I had left the country and I said yes! Now that I can not go back to Eritrea because of my asylum status, and because it is difficult for him to leave the country, we do not know when we will see each other again. We can only hope that it is sooner than we think. For now, I’m happy that I am safe until I meet the love of my life and start a new journey.
A very particular social group Joseph E. Langlois, Chief of the Asylum Division at USCIS, issued a memo declaring that within the Seventh Circuit, former gang membership “may” form a “particular social group.” The memo was prompted by a decision in the Seventh Circuit, Ramos v. Holder, 589 F.3d 426 (7th Cir. 2009), which held that former gang membership is a cognizable social group for asylum purposes. Writing for the Court, Judge Posner notes that, “the term ‘particular social groups’ surely was not intended for the protection of members of the criminal class in this country, merely upon a showing that a foreign country deals with them even more harshly than we do.”
The decision continues: “A gang is a group, and being a former member of a group is a characteristic impossible to change, except perhaps by rejoining the group.”
Judge Posner suggests that even where former gang members meet the requirements for asylum, they could be denied as a matter of discretion, or on statutory grounds:
We can imagine the Board’s exercising its discretion to decide that a “refugee” (that is, a person eligible for asylum) whose claim for asylum is based on former membership in a criminal gang should not be granted asylum [because, for example, he is not a person of good moral character and does not deserve a favorable exercise of discretion].
[In this case,] Ramos was a member of a violent criminal group for nine years. If he is found to have committed violent acts while a member of the gang (as apparently he did, although the evidence is not entirely clear), he may be barred from the relief he seeks for reasons unrelated to whether he is a member of a “particular social group”; for remember the bar for aliens who commit a serious nonpolitical crime.
The USCIS Memo states that within the Seventh Circuit, “former gang membership may form a particular social group if the former membership is immutable and the group of former gang members is socially distinct.” Outside of that circuit, Asylum Officers should remember that criminal activity, “past or present, cannot form the basis of a particular social group.” The memo also states that all Asylum Officers, regardless of jurisdiction, should note that past “gang-related activity may serve as an adverse discretionary factor that is weighed against positive factors.”
Asylum applicants must demonstrate that their stories of persecution are reliable, and few things set off judicial “reliability detectors” as much as a shifting narrative.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that a refugee will typically go through a battery of interviews with many different authorities before her claim is adjudicated. As the mound of interview transcripts grows, so too do the odds of conflicting testimony.
Ming Zhang recently learned this the hard way. Zhang, who entered the U.S. in 2003 and made a Chinese “family planning” claim – premised on protections offered for victims of China’s coercive family planning policies – was denied asylum on the basis of inconsistencies between her testimony before an immigration judge, in her “airport interview,” and in her “credible fear” interview. Zhang’s appeal of this denial was upheld in an October 2009 decision that established new precedent in the Second Circuit on the issue of the extent to which reviewing courts may consider the record of “credible fear” interviews when evaluating an alien’s reliability. See Zhang v. Holder, No. 07-0327 (2nd Cir. Oct. 30, 2009):
[Zhang’s] asylum application emphasized that she had undergone two forced abortions and had been driven to attempt suicide. [She] did not, however, discuss any of these events at her airport interview, or at her later credible fear interview.
Zhang, who does not speak English and was interviewed through a Mandarin translator, had told her airport interviewer that she immigrated because the Chinese government was forcing her to “have a birth control device” implanted in her, that she had been detained for refusing to submit to the procedure, and that if she was sent back she “would die.” She repeated but did not add to those claims a week later, in a “credible fear” interview at an INS facility where she had been detained.
When asked why she did not discuss the forced abortions and suicide attempt at those interviews, Zhang said she was “confused” and did not know what to say. She further asserted that she had mentioned “suicide” in her airport interview, and that the omission of that statement from the transcript was wrong. This explanation did not sway the IJ, the BIA, or the federal court.
The new Immigration Court in the Northern Mariana Islands is up and running. An article in the Saipan Tribune reports that “The Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement has filed 30 new removal cases, bringing to 51 the total number of cases that have been filed with the Saipan U.S. Immigration Court since the federalization law took effect on Nov. 28.”
From Tuesday until Thursday, Immigration Judge Philip L. DiMarzio heard the 51 cases, mostly Chinese nationals involved in human smuggling cases. In what appears to be a blatant breach of confidentiality, the paper reported and named a Chinese asylum seeker who appeared before the court. For more on confidentiality and Immigration Courts, click here.
On March 26, 2010, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a published decision in Matter of H-L-H- & Z-Y-Z, 25 I&N Dec. 209, Interim Decision # 3676 (BIA 2010). In that case, the IJ granted asylum to a couple from China who feared persecution / forced sterilization. DHS appealed. The Board sustained the appeal and ordered the couple removed to China. Some key points from that decision:
While the Immigration Judge’s findings of fact are reviewed under the “clearly erroneous” standard, the question whether the facts are sufficient to establish that the respondent has a well-founded fear of persecution upon return to China is a legal determination that we review de novo.
Determining whether a fear of what may happen in the future is well founded essentially involves predicting future events, and “it is impossible to declare as ‘fact’ things that have not yet occurred.” … We therefore review de novo the question whether the respondent has carried her burden of establishing a well-founded fear [of future persecution].
In order to determine, under de novo review, whether specific facts are sufficient to meet a legal standard such as a “well-founded fear,” the Board has authority to give different weight to the evidence from that given by the Immigration Judge…. This authority is critical to permit the Board to determine whether the facts as found by the Immigration Judge meet the relevant legal standard….
State Department reports on country conditions, including the Profiles of Asylum Claims & Country Conditions, are highly probative evidence and are usually the best source of information on conditions in foreign nations.
The Board seems to have discounted letters and news articles that did not accord with the State Department reports on China. While it is understandable that the BIA would give significant weight to reports from the U.S. government, it seems a bad precedent to minimize evidence that may be more specific to the asylum seekers’ circumstances.
In a published decision, the BIA has reversed an Immigration Judge’s ruling that an application for asylum filed within one year of “changed circumstances” was timely. The IJ granted asylum to a couple from China who feared persecution based on the Chinese government’s coercive family planning policy. The couple filed for asylum within one year of the birth of their second child. The IJ found that the couple’s asylum application was filed within a reasonable period of the changed circumstances and granted relief. In Matter of T-M-H- & S-W-C-, 25 I&N Dec. 193, Interim Decision # 3673 (BIA 2010), the Board reversed, holding:
[W]e disagree with the Immigration Judge’s legal determination that the respondents satisfy an exception to the 1-year asylum filing deadline simply because their applications were filed within 1 year of “changed circumstances” that materially affect their eligibility for relief.
The Board noted that asylum applications must be filed within a “reasonable period” of the changed circumstances. Normally, such reasonable period cannot exceed six months. The BIA remanded with instructions for the IJ to determine whether the “respondents’ situation warrants an exception to the 1-year asylum application filing deadline.”
If passed into law, the Refugee Protection Act would eliminate the one-year filing deadline and might modify the “reasonable period” examined here.
In In re C-T-L, the BIA invited amicus curiae briefing on the question of whether the “one central reason” standard adopted by the REAL ID Act, and indisputably applicable in asylum cases, also applies to withholding of removal cases. Engaging in a comprehensive statutory interpretation analysis, AILA’s amicus brief [available to AILA members only] demonstrates that this standard does apply to withholding cases.At the same time, AILA urges the BIA to reconsider an earlier precedential asylum case that unlawfully restricts the meaning of the “one central reason” standard. Unfortunately, AILA is not alone as amicus. The anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) submitted an amicus brief which argues for the opposite result, although without the same thorough analysis found in AILA’s brief [ed. note: we cannot comment on the quality of the FAIR brief, since it is not available on the internet].
Last month, the BIA also heard oral argument in another asylum case in which the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), the Immigration Council, and AILA all participated as amici. There, the BIA was concerned with whether, under National Cable & Telecomm. Ass’n v. Brand X Internet Services, 545 U.S. 967 (2005) (Brand X), it could refuse to follow Ninth Circuit precedent that sets forth the “disfavored group” analysis for asylum cases. At oral argument, counsel for NWIRP (Matt Adams), representing amici, explained how the disfavored group standard arises directly from the asylum statute itself and is an entirely reasonable doctrine, not inconsistent with the case law of the other circuits. For these reasons, amici argue that the Board must apply this standard in cases arising in the Ninth Circuit.
Given the glacial pace of the BIA, don’t expect a decision any time soon on these cases.
Chicago Public Radio reports that a record case load at the Chicago Immigration Court is causing hardship for asylum seekers:
Chicago’s federal immigration court is backed up with a record 8,696 cases. The average wait for a hearing is more than a year. Some immigrants don’t mind, since the backlog buys them time here. But it’s hard on asylum seekers. And it has consequences on other parts of the justice system.
Attorney Lisa Palumbo of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago says long delays for asylum applicants are the norm. They have to put off decisions like buying a home and accepting a job out of state. Palumbo points out that many can’t get work authorization or student financial aid. Worse, many are separated from family members in their home countries, and sometimes those family members face potential persecution.
Here’s what’s causing the logjam: The government has added more agents and prosecutors to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants. But it hasn’t added enough judges to hear the cases. At the Chicago court, the number of judges since 2006 has actually dropped from eight to five.
The Asylumist reported on this problem in recent post, We Need More Judges. EOIR has stated that additional immigration judges are on the way. For asylum seekers stuck in the system, the new judges cannot arrive soon enough.
Immigrant rights groups continue to come out in favor of the Refugee Protection Act of 2010, introduced last week by Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The American Immigration Lawyers Association issued a statement:
“This is a significant piece of legislation that comes at the right time given the global unrest that troubles our world,” said Bernie Wolfsdorf, President of AILA. “America has stood as a beacon of hope for so many and this bill gives hope to those who are in most need – refugees and asylum seekers. The bill would grant much needed protections to those fleeing persecution and brings about much needed reform in the adjudication system. I am hopeful Congress will act swiftly and in a bipartisan manner to fix the immigration process for refugees and asylees.”
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society strongly supports the new legistlation, which it deems necessary to correct changes that have eroded protection for refugees and asylum seekers in the United States:
While the provisions of the Refugee Act have resulted in the protection of countless refugees and asylum seekers during the 30 years it has been in effect, in recent years, protections for asylum seekers have eroded. Laws have been enacted containing provisions that threaten the rights and safety of asylum seekers, including a harsh expedited removal system, arbitrary deadlines for filing asylum claims, and other limitations on asylum seekers’ ability to obtain protection in the U.S. Even after asylum seekers have proven their credible fear of persecution, many are detained, and less restrictive alternatives to detention rarely are provided to asylum seekers who are found not to be threats to society. The Refugee Protection Act proposes thoughtful and effective solutions to these problems and will ensure that fairness is restored to the asylum system.
Immigration Equality, an immigrant rights group that has been “fighting for equality under U.S. immigration law for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and HIV-positive individuals” since 1994 also endorses the bill:
“We have always believed that LGBT asylum seekers are disproportionately affected by the one year filing deadline for asylum applications, because so many of them simply don’t know that the persecution they faced as sexual minorities could be grounds for asylum here,” said Rachel B. Tiven, the group’s executive director. “Eliminating this unfair deadline will help many LGBT and HIV-positive victims of persecution obtain safe haven in the United States.”
The Church World Service, which has been assisting refugees since 1946, and the International Rescue Committe, which has been assisting refugees since 1933, have both issued statements supporting the proposed law.
