Legal News

No Asylum: Second Circuit Struggles with Immigration Caseload

By Ashby Jones

Perhaps we were naive. But one of the most striking (dare we say, disillusioning?) impressions we had during our clerkship was how, well, underpolished many of the briefs were. There were grammatical errors, spelling mistakes (as bloggers, we know we can’t throw a lot of stones on this front). Even worse were the briefs containing arguments that went round in circles or went nowhere at all, case citations that just didn’t make sense. Briefs like that were not only headache-inducing, but a little depressing, too. Wow, we’d think. Does the client really know what he or she is paying for?

We were reminded of that feeling this morning while reading Adam Liptak’s column in the NYT on the reams of briefs pouring into the Second Circuit from immigration lawyers. In recent years, writes Liptak, the number of immigration appeals has more than quintupled, a result of revisions to the way immigration cases are handled. Liptak cites a study revealing that seven small immigration firms each had more than 100 appeals pending in the Second Circuit in the spring of 2005.

There is, Judge Robert A. Katzmann wrote for a panel of Second Circuit judges in February, a “disturbing pattern of ineffectiveness” at the lower levels of the immigration bar, one that rears its head in the appeals courts with “alarming frequency.”

Writes Liptak: “It is easy to feel superior to [overworked immigration lawyers], but they are symptoms of a systemic problem rather than its cause.” The problem? Many of the people involved in immigration appeals are often poor. But because the matters often deal with asylum requests and aren’t criminal in nature, such appellants aren’t entitled to government-provided lawyers.

Still, writes Liptak, having a lawyer makes a difference. A study published last year in The Stanford Law Review found that 46 percent of people who appeared with lawyers or other representatives were granted asylum. People without lawyers won 16 percent of the time.

Liptak finishes the column thusly: “Nobody should be happy to hear that whether people who claim to be fleeing persecution are deported or not turns on how good a lawyer they have — or whether they can afford one at all.”

LB Readers, whaddya think?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 15, 2008 (boomark / email).