Asylum and Its Discontents in the United States
Our guest blogger today is Jonathan Bialosky, an attorney at the George Washington University Law School Immigration Clinic. He recently had an important win in an “other serious harm” asylum case. It also happens that he was a student in Todd Pilcher and my Asylum Law class at GW last semester. Congratulations on the win (and on passing … Read more
I had a case last week where the Eritrean government arrested and beat my client because they believed she helped her brother escape from the national military service. We tried to frame the case in terms of imputed political opinion (our claim was that the authorities thought my client was “anti-government” because she helped her … Read more
In most cases, to obtain asylum, an applicant must demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or particular social group. But there are a couple of exceptions: “Humanitarian Asylum” and “Other Serious Harm.” Humanitarian asylum allows an applicant to receive asylum if she “demonstrate[s] compelling reasons for being unwilling … Read more