Former BIA Chairman Paul W. Schmidt on His Career, the Board, and the Purge (part 1)

Paul Wickham Schmidt served as Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) from 1995 to 2001. He was a Board Member of the BIA from 2001 to 2003, and served as an Immigration Judge in Arlington, Virginia from 2003 until his retirement earlier this year. He also worked in private practice and held other senior positions in government, including Deputy General Counsel and Acting General Counsel at INS. The Asylumist caught up with Judge Schmidt in Maine, where he has been enjoying his retirement, and talked to him about his career, the BIA, and the “purge” of 2003.

ASYLUMIST: How did you get started in the field of immigration?

Since he retired, Judge Schmidt has been doing a lot of this (eat your heart out, Burmanator!).
Since he retired, Judge Schmidt has been doing a lot of this (eat your heart out, Burmanator!).

PWS: My wife, Cathy, and I had both spent our whole lives in Wisconsin. After I graduated from law school, we wanted to go somewhere else. Because I went to law school in Wisconsin, I did not have to take the bar—I was granted automatic admission to the Wisconsin bar. I’ve actually never taken a bar exam. I knew if I got a job with the federal government, I would not have to take a bar, so I was interested in working for the feds. Also, I had an uncle from Wisconsin who went to DC to work for the Roosevelt Administration and stayed for an entire career, and that also attracted me to federal service.

I applied to the Department of Justice through the Honors Program, but they rejected me. At the time, the Board did not actively recruit from the Honors Program, but they looked at the pool of applicants, liked my writing experience, and asked me to apply. I didn’t know anything about immigration, so the first thing I did was to go to the law school library and learn about immigration law. Then, we drove to Washington, DC for the interview. I met the Chairman, Board Members, and the Executive Assistant. Following an afternoon of interviews, the Chairman, Maurice A. “Maury” Roberts, a legendary immigration “guru,” called me in and said, “We discussed it at conference, and you’ll do.” With that auspicious beginning, I was hired. It was 1973. At the time, the BIA had nine staff attorneys and five Board Members.

I liked the job. It was a great group of people, and I learned a lot about the law. Chairman Roberts was a mentor to me and my office-mate. I also worked with the late Lauri Steven Filppu, who became a close friend, and who went on to become a Deputy Director of the Office of Immigration Litigation and then served with me on the BIA.I liked the human interest element and that it involved creative thinking. However, there was an ideological divide among the Board Members. At that time, Board Members were political appointees, rather than career appointments as they are today. The most senior Board Member had been appointed by President Truman. Chairman Roberts was appointed at the end of the Johnson Administration. I believe the other three Board Members were appointed during the Nixon Administration and did not have prior immigration backgrounds. Also, in those days, oral argument was a right, and the Board had four days of oral argument each week.

While I was there, Lauri Filppu and I helped form the BIA employees union, which was led by our friend and colleague Joan Churchill. She later became an Immigration Judge in Arlington and served with me there for several years before her retirement. One impetus for forming the union was an incident where the Board librarian was fired in the middle of our Christmas party. We thought that was harsh. The union still exists today. Indeed, as Chairman, I later had to go “head to head” with the union on an arbitration relating to the assignment of offices.

ASYLUMIST: You started as BIA staff. How did you get to be Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals?

PWS: I left the BIA at the end of 1975. I felt I had done what I could do there, and the work was getting repetitive. I was ready for something new, and so I moved to the General Counsel’s office at INS. At the time, Sam Bernsen was General Counsel. He was an amazing guy, who started as a messenger on Ellis Island when he was 17 and worked his way up to the top ranks of the Civil Service. He was also a good friend of Chairman Roberts. I advanced in the General Counsel’s office, and by the end of the Carter Administration, I was the Deputy General Counsel and the Acting General Counsel. The Deputy General Counsel basically ran the day-to-day operations of the INS’s nationwide legal program. The General Counsel during the Carter Administration, David Crosland (now an Immigration Judge in Baltimore) was the Acting Commissioner of the INS for about the last half of the Administration. At the time, I was only 31 or 32 years old. In that period, we were re-organizing the legal program. The GC took over supervision of Trial Attorneys (they were previously supervised by the District Directors – they now are called “Assistant Chief Counsels”). We also replaced Naturalization Attorneys with paralegals. Some of these changes were controversial within the INS. I got yelled at a lot by some of the District Directors. But, I can yell pretty loud too. This was really the beginning of what today are the Offices of Chief Counsel at the DHS. And, I worked on legislation, including the Refugee Act of 1980, which brought me into contact with David Martin and Alex Aleinikoff who later became well known in the immigration and refugee world. Other big issues I worked on were the so-called Cuban Boatlift and the Iranian Hostage Crisis.

I continued as Deputy GC during the Reagan Administration. I served under General Counsel Maurice C. Inman, Jr., known as “Iron Mike.” He was a real character, but we got a tremendous amount accomplished together. It was more or less a “bad cop, good cop” situation. We completed the legal program reorganization, and I also helped plan and execute the transfer of the Immigration Judges out of INS and into a separate entity, which was the “birth of EOIR” in 1983. Mike left in 1986, and I became the Acting GC again, right at the time that IRCA was enacted. But, I felt like I had reached a dead end.

I applied for jobs at law schools, and I found a head-hunter. However, it was the “Old Girl Network” through Cathy, who was then the president of our co-op preschool, which led to my next job. I was offered a senior associate position at Jones Day, which was just starting an immigration practice. At that point, the Commissioner, Al Nelson, and the Attorney General, Ed Meese, offered me the GC job, which I had always wanted.  But, I turned it down. I moved over to Jones Day, and remained there as a partner until 1992.

It was difficult to be an immigration attorney in a general practice firm, and so I eventually went to Fragomen, Del Rey, and Bernsen, where I succeeded my mentor Sam Bernsen as Managing Partner of the DC Office.  I did mostly business immigration. While I liked private practice, and learned much that has been helpful in making me a better judge, I felt that business immigration was like working at a well-baby clinic: Highly stressful, but fundamentally routine. We had to do as many cases as we could, as quickly as possible, which made it challenging to take on interesting cases that did not generate significant fees or repeat business. The clients wanted more for less, and there was always pressure to charge more and more money to contribute to the success of the firm. In the end, I suppose my heart was not in business immigration. I liked my clients, my colleagues, and making more money for our family than I had in government, but eventually it was not as satisfying as government work.

Around this time, the BIA Chair position opened up. I liked the idea of being in charge, and I felt there were opportunities to be creative. But, there was a lot of competition for the job. I lobbied the people I knew for their support, and in the end, I was offered the position. I began work in February 1995. I definitely think my experience in the private sector was a significant factor in my getting the job.

The goal when I started was to make the Board into the “13th Circuit,” to make it more like a court, to expand the diversity and the number of Board Members, to publish more opinions, and to develop a more humane and realistic view of asylum law. There was a big backlog, and we needed more Board Members. Up until then, different Immigration Judges were being detailed to the BIA to help with the work, but this system was cumbersome and it was very expensive. The original plan was to expand the Board from five to nine Members, but with then Director Tony Moscato’s help, we managed to expand it to twelve Board Members (four panels of three Members each). Attorney General Janet Reno was receptive to expanding the BIA, and we also increased the staff significantly and set up a team structure with senior supervisors. While I was there, we also changed the appeals filing system so that people could file directly with the Board (instead of filing appeals with the local court), and we added bar codes to help organize the files (up until that time, staff spent a lot of time looking for lost files). All these changes required us to expand the legal and clerical staff. And, the BIA itself kept on growing, reaching a membership of more than 20 just before the Ashcroft purge.

The expanded Board also became more polarized. Essentially, the middle fell out of the Board shortly after the Kasinga case in 1996. Before then, I was often in the majority, but after that time, I was out-voted in most precedential decisions. I think the enactment of the IIRIRA at the end of 1996 also had something to do with it. By the time of the R-A- decision in 1999—one of the most disappointing cases of my tenure because the majority squandered the chance to show real judicial leadership, take the next logical step following Kasinga, and “do the right thing” for domestic violence victims—I was pretty firmly entrenched in the minority for en banc decisions. I therefore often had to write or join separate dissenting opinions, known as “SOPs” in BIA lingo.

ASYLUMIST: This brings up an interesting point. I’ve long felt that the BIA should issue more precedent decisions, to provide more guidance to Immigration Judges. Why doesn’t the Board publish more decisions? And how does the Board decide which cases will be published?

PWS: I think that following the “Ashcroft purge,” the BIA has become hesitant to delve into controversial issues, particularly those that might provoke dissent. During my time at the Board, we did publish more decisions. Indeed, in my first full year as Chair, in 1996, we published approximately 40 opinions, many with separate dissents and concurrences, on cutting edge issues like particular social group, credibility, AEDPA, and IIRIRA. By contrast, in 2015, the BIA published approximately 33 decisions, and neither the dialogue nor the range of issues was nearly as extensive. Even with a greatly expanded and often divided Board, in 1999, one of my last full years as Chairman, we published 50 precedents, many dealing with extraordinarily difficult and complex issues.

The idea later promoted by the “Ashcroft crowd”—that a very large, diverse, and often divided Board cannot produce timely, important guidance–is ridiculous. Any party could request that a case be designated as a precedent decision. But generally, the Board was not receptive to party requests. The Chair or the Attorney General could also designate a decision as precedential. In addition, by majority vote, any panel could recommend a case for en banc consideration, and a majority vote of the Board could designate a decision as precedential.  Almost all of the precedents were the result of the en banc process.

Ironically, one the most common reasons for publication was because the majority wanted to “slam” the dissenters’ position. These tended to be cases that illustrated important points or new interpretations of the law. Also, when new laws went into effect, and we had to interpret new statutory provisions, we were more likely to issue a precedent decision. In fact, there was a lot of controversy on the Board surrounding the dissenting positions. The Members generally got along with each other, but there was a lot of stress related to differing viewpoints. Some Members felt that dissenters were attacking the BIA as an institution.  My being in the dissent in a number of precedents strained my relationship with some of my colleagues who were almost always in the majority.

Perhaps this was a consequence of my decision to change the format of BIA decisions so they looked more like court decisions. Therefore, Board Members had personal responsibility for their decisions. This made Board Members more accountable for their decisions, but it also gave them more of a personal stake in each decision.

Unfortunately, the BIA today has abandoned one of its primary functions—to provide timely expert guidance on the INA. Instead, it now publishes mostly non-controversial stuff, unless a Federal Circuit Court orders the Board to enter a precedential decision (I call this, “Go fetch me a precedent”). The initiative for shaping immigration law has gone from the BIA to the Federal Courts. There needs to be reform. I think the Board should function like the 13th Circuit; instead, it is more like the Falls Church Service Center. There are far too many single Member decisions, and the single-Member decisions are all over the place. The Board should use three Member panels in all cases where the IJ decision is not suitable for summary affirmance. That’s the “original streamlining” that I instituted, and it was intended to increase dialogue and careful deliberation, not eliminate it, as has been the case under the misguided “Ashcroft reforms.”

The Board also needs to be independent, but I do not see the willingness in the DOJ to make that necessary change, which would require legislation. When the DOJ wants to resist the Circuit Courts, Congress or public scrutiny, they talk about the Board’s expertise. But when the DOJ addresses IJs and Board Members, they refer to them as just “DOJ Attorneys” — employees who should follow the Attorney General. In other words, the DOJ’s external message is, “The BIA is like a court, so due process is provided and you should not intervene,” but the internal message to Immigration Judges and Board Members is, “You exist to implement the power of the Attorney General, you aren’t ‘real’ independent Federal Judges.”

ASYLUMIST: What other changes did you make at the Board while you were Chair?

PWS: We started doing more oral arguments, including oral arguments on the road (this is now prohibited by regulation). I thought if we were to function as an appellate court, we should be seen in the different places. Some Members liked this; others did not. Some thought oral argument was a waste of time. However, once I became an Immigration Judge, as you know, I was able to have oral argument in every case.

The BIA Pro Bono Project also started during my time as Chair. Under the Pro Bono Project, volunteer attorneys come to the Board office, review appeals of unrepresented immigrants, and then assign meritorious appeals to volunteer attorneys for representation. There was a lot of internal opposition to the Project because it was seen as the BIA deciding who gets represented and who does not. We had not done anything like this before. But, it has been highly successful.

The Virtual Law Library was also started under my tenure, with strong support and encouragement from Director Moscato. Also, we instituted an “electronic en banc voting system.” We also eliminated the position of “Chief Attorney Examiner/Alternate Board Member” and gave the duties of overseeing BIA staff to the two Vice Chairs who assisted me. That was after the last Chief Attorney Examiner, Neil Miller, who recently retired, was appointed to the Board by Attorney General Reno.

ASYLUMIST: Let’s take a break. In next week’s installment, Judge Schmidt discusses the “purge,” his prescription for fixing what ails the Board, and other controversial stuff. Stay tuned…

How to Find a Free Asylum Attorney

If you want to hire a lawyer to help you with your asylum case, you’ll find that attorney fees are all over the map. Some lawyers charge tens of thousands of dollars for a case. The larger immigration firms typically charge in the five to ten thousand dollar range. “Low bono” lawyers–and I include myself in this group–charge a few thousand dollars for an asylum case.

Remember, when you use a pro bono attorney instead of hiring me, you are taking food from the mouths of my children.
Remember, when you use a pro bono attorney instead of hiring me, you are taking food from the mouths of my children.

But what if you do not have any money for a lawyer, and even a “low bono” fee is too much? The options then are to do the case yourself (usually not a great idea) or to find a pro bono attorney.

Pro bono (short for “pro bono publico”) is a Latin phrase meaning “for the public good.” In the legal context, it basically means that the lawyer does the work without charging the client any money.

There are different types of pro bono attorneys. The major categories are lawyers who work for charities, attorneys who work for law school clinics, and private attorneys who volunteer their time. There are advantages and disadvantages to each type of pro bono attorney, and strategies for finding an attorney in each category are a bit different.

I suspect that most asylum seekers who find a pro bono attorney do so through a charitable organization. You can find a fairly comprehensive list of such organizations on the Executive Office for Immigration Review website (EOIR is the government agency that administers the nation’s Immigration Courts). The list is organized by state, which is helpful. If you do not see your location, click on a nearby state and you should find charities that serve your area. The American Immigration Lawyer’s Association (an association of private and non-profit attorneys) maintains a similar, and probably more comprehensive, list. Many of the organizations on these lists are free. Some charge a nominal fee (though in certain instances, I have heard about “nominal fees” ranging into the thousands of dollars, but this is the exception, not the norm). Also, most such organizations will not take a case where they believe the asylum seeker has the ability to pay for a lawyer.

The main disadvantage of using a charitable organization is that they are very busy, and they may not have the capacity to take your case. Also, if you need your case done in a hurry, they may not be able to accommodate you. Indeed, the reason lawyers like me exist is because the charitable organizations do not have the resources to help everyone. If you are able to obtain representation from a charity, they will either do the case in-house, or they will find you a volunteer attorney who will work under their supervision. Many of these volunteer attorneys do not specialize in asylum. However, the non-profits are adept at training and supervising their volunteer lawyers, and in most cases, you will get excellent representation.

So how do you get one of these charities to take your case? It often is not easy, and you may need to call/email/visit a number of organizations before you find one that can help you. But if you are persistent, you may be able to obtain representation. If one organization cannot help you, ask whether they can recommend another to try. It can feel like a full-time job to find a pro bono lawyer, but those applicants who make the effort are often able to obtain representation.

Another type of pro bono representation is the legal clinic. Many law schools have clinical programs where a law professor supervises law students in real-life cases. The students do the actual work on the case. I do not know of a comprehensive, updated list of law school immigration clinics, but this list (in Excel) from the Law Professors Blog Network should get you started. Also, you might try Googling “Law School Immigration Clinic” + the name of your city. Again, these clinics receive many requests for assistance and they have limited capacity, so it is often difficult to get one to represent you.

If you are represented by a law school clinic, you will work mostly with the students–after all, the primary purpose of the clinic is to provide a learning experience for the students. The obvious question is whether law students have the ability to adequately represent asylum applicants in court or in the asylum office. My observation is that, what the students lack in experience, they make up for in enthusiasm and energy. Also, the supervision at clinics (at least the ones I have seen) tends to be excellent. I do not know of any studies on this, but I expect that the success rate of clinical students is comparable to the success rate of practicing attorneys. One issue for clinics is that their cases must be scheduled according to the academic calendar, which can sometimes cause additional delays (though sometimes, it can make things faster instead).

Finally, many law firms have pro bono programs where the firm will represent individuals free of charge. Most firms get their pro bono clients from charitable organizations, but they can take on individual cases directly. If you know someone at a law firm (or if you know someone who knows someone), you might want to ask about this. If the attorney is not familiar with asylum law, she can likely partner with a non-profit organization, which will supervise her (the non-profits usually love to get new volunteer attorneys and are happy to help).

In truth, it is often difficult to find pro bono representation. Resources are stretched thin. But if you persevere, it is possible to find a free attorney. And having an attorney can make a big difference in the outcome of your case.

Refugee in Iconic WWII Photo Dies at Age 92

On the afternoon of August 14, 1945, George Mendonsa was sitting in a movie theater with his date in New York City. Home from the Pacific Theater, where he served in the navy, Mr. Mendonsa was expecting to return to war and to the long-anticipated (and dreaded) invasion of Japan. Suddenly, the movie stopped, the lights came on, and someone announced that the war was over.

This is how it looks when a war ends (from the days when wars actually ended).
This is how it looks when a war ends (from the days when wars actually ended).

The theater goers spilled out into the street. Mr. Mendonsa and his date Rita Petri went to a bar where they imbibed maybe a bit too much. They then returned to the celebration in Times Square.

The 20-year old Mendonsa had witnessed some horrible sights during his time in the navy. Most recently, he saw two Kamikaze planes destroy an American ship. Over 300 servicemen were killed. Many others were horribly wounded. Mr. Mendonsa assisted at the scene, and witnessed the American nurses tending to the injured.

As he walked through the square, Mr. Mendonsa caught sight of a woman in a nurse’s uniform. In an instant, he grabbed her, swooped her down, and kissed her. The moment was captured by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt and his photo came to symbolize the relief and exuberance that our country felt at the end of World War II (though the continued glorification of Mr. Mendonsa’s non-consensual kiss is a bit creepy).

Although the photo itself became famous, for many years, the people in the photo were unknown. A number of men and women came forward, claiming that they were the ones in the picture. Only in recent years has the mystery been solved (probably).

It turns out that the woman in the photo (the kissee, if you will) was not a nurse; she was a 21-year old dental assistant from Queens named Greta Zimmer. Ms. Zimmer was also a refugee from Nazi-controlled Austria.

Margarete “Greta” Zimmer was born on June 5, 1924 in eastern Austria. Her parents, Max and Ida, and her two sisters were Jewish. In the years leading up to World War II, Austria drifted into the orbit of Nazi Germany, and conditions for Jews deteriorated. Then, in March 1938, Austrian Nazis took control of the government. In the same month, German troops occupied the country. Despite the overt anti-Semitism and the increasing danger, the Zimmer family tried to remain in their homeland.

By 1939, the family’s thinking had changed. The danger was mounting and opportunities to leave were disappearing. Max and Ida decided to send their daughters out of Austria, even if they had not secured passage for themselves. One daughter was sent to Palestine. Greta, then 15 years old, and her sister Jo came to the United States (lucky for them, given the strict quota laws in place at the time). The girls hoped that the separation from their parents would be only temporary.

Relatives in New York welcomed Greta and Jo to the United States. Greta volunteered as an air-raid warden during the war. She took classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

On the day of the photo, Greta Zimmer was working in a dental office near Times Square. All morning, they had been hearing rumors that the war had ended, and after lunch, she went over to Times Square, where she saw a lighted billboard declaring “V-J Day!” As for the kiss, Ms. Zimmer remembered it in a 2005 interview

Suddenly, I was grabbed by a sailor. It wasn’t that much of a kiss. It was more of a jubilant act that he didn’t have to go back. I found out later he was so happy that he didn’t have to go back to the Pacific where [he] had already been through the war. The reason he grabbed somebody dressed like a nurse [was because] he felt so very grateful to the nurses who took care of the wounded.

I’m not sure about the kiss… it was just somebody celebrating. It wasn’t a romantic event. It was just an event of “Thank God the war is over.”

After the war, Ms. Zimmer married Dr. Mischa Friedman and had two children. She studied and later worked at Hood College in Maryland. It wasn’t until years later that Ms. Zimmer saw the photo and recognized herself in it. She also eventually met George Mendonsa, who by then had married Rita Petri, his date on V-J Day.

Ms. Zimmer never saw her parents again. They died in Auschwitz. She also lost many other family members during the Holocaust. In all, of 181,000 Jews in Austria in 1938, approximately 65,000 were murdered by the Nazis. Most of the remainder fled the country. Only a few thousand Jews remained in Austria by the end of the war.

Greta Zimmer Friedman died on September 8, 2016. She was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, next to her late husband, who was a military veteran. She was 92. May her memory be a blessing.

The Asylum Interview

After you file affirmatively for asylum, you will wait for months or years, and then finally, you will have an interview. What happens at this interview? And how do you prepare for it?

The interview is a (supposedly) non-confrontational conversation between the asylum applicant and an Asylum Officer. It takes place in an office; not a courtroom. You can bring an attorney and/or an interpreter with you to the interview. And sometimes, an Asylum Office supervisor or trainee is also present.

A typical Asylum Office interrogation chamber... er, interview room.
A typical Asylum Office interrogation chamber… er, interview room.

Before the interview, when you arrives at the Asylum Office, you need to check in. This consists of giving the interview notice to a receptionist, who will take your photo and fingerprints, and give you a paper to read. The paper reminds you of your obligation to tell the truth and lets you know that you can bring an interpreter with you to the interview. Do not sign the paper—you will sign it once you are with the Asylum Officer in the interview room.

The interview itself is divided into a few parts.

First, the Asylum Officer will explain and administer the oath, during which you will promise to tell the truth. If you have an interpreter, the Asylum Officer will also make her take an oath. For people using an interpreter, the Asylum Officer will call another interpreter on the phone, and this person will monitor the accuracy of the interpretation. If the interpreter you bring makes a mistake, the telephone interpreter will correct it (remember to speak loudly and clearly, so the person on the phone can hear you).

After the oath, the Officer will review your form I-589 and give you an opportunity to make any corrections or updates. It is important to review the form yourself before you go to the interview, so you are ready to make corrections and updates when the time comes.

Once the form is corrected, you will reach the heart of the interview, where the Officer will ask about why you need asylum in the United States. A few points to keep in mind here: First, if the Officer asks you a question that you do not understand, do not answer the question. Instead, ask for clarification. The Officer is typing what you say, thinking about his next question, and reading your file, all at the same time, so he may well ask you a poorly-worded question. It is not a problem—and indeed, it is common—for an applicant to ask the Officer to clarify a question. Do not be afraid to do that. Second, if you do not know the answer to a question, or do not remember the answer, do not guess. Just say, “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember.” If you guess, and your answer is different from your documents (or different from other information that the Asylum Officer has), it may cause the Asylum Officer to believe you are not telling the truth, which could result in your case being denied. Obviously, it is better if you know and remember the facts of your case, so make sure to review your statement before the interview.

There are certain questions that the Officers usually ask, and you should be prepared for them: Why do you fear returning to your country? If you or a family member have been harmed in the past, describe what happened. If you face harm from a terrorist group or other non-governmental actor, can your home government protect you? Is there somewhere in your country where you can live safely? If you are a member of a political party, the Officer might test your knowledge of the party by asking about its leaders or history. If you are seeking asylum based on religious persecution, the Officer might ask you about the tenets of your religion. For people who served in the military or police, the Officer might ask about the nature of your service, and whether you might have engaged in persecution of others. If you ever had any interactions with a terrorist or insurgent group, the Officer will ask about that. The Officer will also want to know about other countries you have lived in, or traveled through. If you left your country and then returned, the Officer may want to know why you returned home then, but do not want to go back now. Also, the Officer will have a copy of any prior visa applications (possibly including applications made to other countries or the United Nations) or any other documentation you submitted in an immigration matter, so you should be prepared for questions about prior applications. Of course, depending on your case, the questions will vary, and that is why it is so important to review your case before the interview and think about the types of issues that might come up (and if you have a lawyer, she should think about and work through these issues with you).

Usually near the end of the interview, the Officer will ask you the “bar questions,” which everyone must answer: Have you committed a crime or been arrested? Are you a terrorist? Did you ever have military training? etc.

Sometimes at the end of the interview, the Officer will ask whether you have anything else to add. If the Officer covered all the major issues, I recommend to my clients that they simply thank the officer and end the interview. Some people want to give a long statement about their desperate situation or their family members’ problems. In my opinion, such statements are not helpful, and could end up causing more problems than they solve.

Finally, the Officer will instruct you about the next steps–the Officer will not give you a decision on the day of the interview. Either you will be required to return to the Asylum Office to pick up your decision (usually in two weeks), or they will send the decision by mail (which could take days, months or years). I always caution my clients, even if the Officer tells you to return in two weeks, it is very common for pick-up decisions to be canceled and turned into mail-out decisions. In other words, until you have the decision in your hand, you have to remain patient, and you cannot make any plans.

The whole interview process can take an hour, but more often, it takes a few hours. On occasion, it takes many hours, and sometimes the Officer will ask you to return another day for more questions.

So what do you do to prepare for the interview? First, make sure you have submitted all your documents and evidence in advance, according to the rules of your local Asylum Office (in my local office—Virginia—for example, we are required to submit all documents at least one week in advance, but local rules may vary). Second, review your statement and evidence prior to the interview. Think about what issues may come up, and how you want to respond to those issues. Bring with you to the interview your passport(s) and any original documents you have. If you have dependent family members as part of your application, they need to attend the interview too (though usually they will not be asked many questions by the Officer). Dress in a respectful manner. Be on time or early.

The interview is a key part of your asylum case. If you know what to expect and are prepared to address the issues–especially any difficult issues–you will greatly improve your chances for a successful outcome.