My brother's friend from school is a Georgian – I'll call him Konstantin; he has lived in Moscow for many years. He attended college there, started a family there, and has spent more than 20 years working there. For all intents and purposes, he has been a "Russian soul" since childhood, or, rather, "Russian-speaking," like many residents of the fraternal Soviet republics who were severed from their roots by the national policies of the "People's leader." And now, like all Georgians residing in Russia, he is faced with a decision: either return home, where chaos and tyranny rule, or escape all the horrors of the post-Soviet regions and take his family to a normal democratic country.
Konstantin has visited America as a tourist. In contrast to many of his peers, he did not idealize the Country of Freedom. But now he has taken an interest in the United States as a possible place to immigrate to legally. Is there any hope that people like him – Georgians who are "Russified," but are currently afraid to stay in Russia – will be added to the refugee category? He started calling friends and acquaintances who have lived in the United States for a long time and the lawyers among them gave him a disappointing answer: There's little chance that Washington will want to spoil its relationship with Moscow by adopting a law conferring refugee status upon Russian Georgians. He could always choose another path: come here as a guest and then stay, submitting an application for political asylum.
This may be the best way, but it is not at all easy, since the chances of being granted political asylum in the United States are currently slim. The film "Moscow on the Hudson" praises times when America lovingly embraced all rebels and refugees from the "Evil Empire," welcoming them with warmth and care. These days are long gone. Now Russians who decide to remain in the United States by no means end up can count on becoming a local resident after pronouncing the magical, fateful words: I defect! And there's nothing that can be done about this. America has changed, Russia has changed, the whole world has changed.
An interview with an immigration judge has always been akin to Judgment Day for political asylum applicants. These days judges resemble inquisitors, whose goal is more to expose immigrants and extract an admission of distortion of facts rather than to ascertain in an impartial manner how valid their fears and claims are.
The attitude of immigration judges is a result not only of new anti-immigrant trends, but also of an outrageous workload. Over the past decade, America has seen an unprecedented influx of immigrants. The 218 U.S. immigration judges handle almost 350,000 cases annually – over half of these concern political asylum. To make matters worse, immigration judges now feel the sword of Damocles hanging over them: if the debate surrounding immigration reform come down on the side of "newcomers," then hundreds of more cases will fall into their laps. Most of the new cases would involve applications for political asylum. Their decisions that could end in tragedy, either for the person hoping to find refuge in America, or for America itself. A judge who is too lenient might let an enemy into the country, while a judge who is too strict might send a desperate refugee back home to confront a life full of fear or even death.
In considering any political asylum case, the judge must sift through a web of fact and fantasy, separate the wheat from the chaff, and take into account the characteristics of the immigrant psyche and differences in the political climate of the house country. The interpreter is also key since every vague word used (or misunderstood by the judge) could become a death sentence for political asylum applicants.
The New York Immigration Court in Lower Manhattan is the most overburdened of the 53 immigration courts in the country, with 27 judges handling over 20,000 cases annually, listening to applicants' emotional testimony in 227 languages. In addition to this, bureaucrats in Washington rush the process, insisting that seven years’ work be completed in five, which is to say that the maximum number of cases be closed in a timely fashion. As a result, the judges are forced to consider from 30 to 70 cases simultaneously, hold no less than four hearings a day, and render no less than 15 decisions a week. Moreover, there is a shortage of clerks, bailiffs, stenographers and even competent lawyers in the courts. Under such conditions, how can one avoid becoming an "inquisitor" who turns hearings into the third degree?
In 2000, a team of experts from the Justice Department wrote a report stressing that immigration judges in large cities were on the verge of exhaustion and nervous breakdowns. The report was never published and no attention was paid to the observations of the experts. And now many immigrants are forced to pay a high price for the indifference or the "economical economics" of Washington.
When he was younger, Judge Jeffery Chase of New York was an immigration lawyer who represented refugees from China. Chase even received an award for his activities as a human rights advocate. Today he is one of the strictest immigration judges: "defendants" fear him. Applicants who were denied asylum in his court recently filed a suit in federal appeals court that notes his animosity and biased nature, his aggressiveness and offensive behavior, and his attempts to accuse immigrants of lying. One of the complainants is a Chinese woman named Maisy Lui, who was forced to undergo sterilization in her native country.
This suit could lead to a wave of others and the pendulum of public opinion could swing to the side of immigrants. The Harvard Law Review has already appealed to the mass media to launch an extensive campaign against the "inquisitors," turning the five most merciless judges into all-American villains. And U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, concerned by this turn of events, has promised to introduce a system to evaluate the judges’ professionalism, who are employees of the Justice Department.
In accordance with federal law, immigration judges do not have the right to grant interviews to journalists; however, by interviewing retired colleagues, clerks, interpreters and immigrants, journalists manage to learn about their problems.
These interviews have shown that people in robes behave differently. Some patiently bear their burdens, listening as attentively and politely to undocumented immigrants who have married U.S. citizens as they do to people who have fled dictatorial regimes. Others also observe decorum, but they try to close cases as quickly as possible, making negative decisions in the majority of cases.
In so doing, the judges frequently make egregious errors. New York Judge Sandy Hom denied political asylum to a 69-year-old Jewish woman from Lithuania named Janette Kutina, whose husband and father were the victims of unbridled anti-Semites (he later admitted his mistake).
By contrast, there are some judges who are singularly generous with the right to political asylum. The record holder is Judge Margaret McManus who hands out U.S. entrance tickets to 90 percent of her "defendants." But even these kind judges are most probably moved by haste and indifference, not by compassion and humanism.
"The judges are the stepchildren of our entire immigration system," stated Sarah Coleman, who has worked in an immigration court for many years, in an interview with The New York Times. "People want to make the judges out to be scoundrels and villains. There's no denying that there are scoundrels among them. But the main problem is the system itself."
It's like many other systems in the United States – from small businesses to enormous government institutions – is trying to save money at the cost of employees, who are burdened with backbreaking duties.
But the main problem is most probably U.S. immigration policy itself. While Washington supposedly plays the role of "world cop," it also determines who can be defended or taken under its wing based on the level of "friendship" with leaders such as Putin. These are political games that allow terrorists from "friendly" Saudi Arabia to enter America. And these are political games that could leave Russian-speaking Georgians like Konstantin out in the cold.
