Appellate Law

CA1: two unpublished Chinese immigration decisions

By S. COTUS

In honor of the Olympics, I give you two unpublished decisions holding that Chinese people didn't prove that they were oppressed enough.

• Huang v. Mukasey, No. 07-1484 (unpublished).  Petitioner is Chinese.  He says he believes in Democracy.  His claims fail on vagueness and credibility grounds because he can?t really show that he is that persecuted in China, as his family ran a grocery story and lived openly. 
• Lin v. Mukasey, No. 07-2301 (unpublished).  Another Chinese petitioner.  This person raises a ?family planning laws? argument.  Again, mostly a credibility issue here.

Okay, there is more.

I am conflicted.  I think most talk of legal ethics is misplaced.  I also think that Judge Posner?s talk of law and economics is silly.  Legal Ethics Forum contains a link to the NLJ, which talks about how Posner has criticized Immigration Judges.  (The article contains a number of embarrassing legal errors (such as confusing IJs with ALJs, but since NLJ is just trying to suck up to BIGLAW, nobody cares.) 

Now, here is the rub.  Most people would probably agree that many (perhaps most) immigration judges are not taking their job too seriously.  And, their job, is to generally find facts on specific cases and to treat people fairly.  Sometimes there is a legal issue, but let?s set those thing aside.  However Posner doesn?t go into detail about which immigration lawyers are doing a bad job and why not.  But hey, I guess bashing unnamed lawyers that represent poor people for a living is always fair game.

Full post as published by Appellate Law and Practice on May 08, 2008 (boomark / email).