How to Make the Asylum Officer Love Your Client (and You) Before Setting Foot In their Office

By Brian Manning, Esq., brian@manningasylumlaw.com

There’s nothing an Asylum Officer loves more than a well-prepared asylum application packet. A filing that shows the officer how to get to “yes” in the easiest, most direct way possible can do wonders for your client’s affirmative asylum case.

“Being an Asylum Officer is difficult. They’re overworked – expectations for case completion can border on the ridiculous – and distressing stories of suffering are heard all day, everyday. This can take a toll on them whether they believe an applicant or think they’re being lied to. It’s no wonder that morale has been low in the asylum corps for years. Officers rarely last more than two years before moving along professionally.

But you can make their pain your client’s advantage. It’s precisely because the job can be such a grind that a wellconstructed asylum case, that makes the officer’s life easy, has the power to move the needle in a meaningful way. It predisposes the officer to like your client’s case. In my experience as a former Asylum Officer, that makes a grant of asylum more likely.

A properly prepared case that essentially does the officer’s job for them makes a difference. You really can set the stage for your client so that they walk into the interview with the officer that is all but ready to grant asylum, notwithstanding a deluge of inconsistent statements by the applicant during the interview.

Here’s how to manage the five main components of an asylum application to give your client an edge:

(1) Application Form

The Form I-589 is actually the least important aspect of your client’s case, but you still have to do it right. Ensure that every box/space contains an answer (if only “N/A”), and answer the substantive questions and subquestions with full sentences that are actually responsive; don’t just say “see personal statement” or the like. Give the officer enough information in the application itself to at least understand the thrust of the claim.

Also, you don’t want to risk having the Service Center to which the form is submitted reject the application for lack of adequate answers. Two or three sentences for each of the substantive questions (i.e., all those in Part B, save for number one) is normally appropriate.

It’s a crucial part of an asylum application “ packet, and it’s usually done poorly. ”

There is perhaps no more frustrating part of an Asylum Officer’s job than updating and correcting the Form I-589 at the time of the interview. Having to struggle with the applicant to sort out dates, street names and other basic information that must be updated is time-consuming and frustrating. It gets your client off on a bad foot with the officer. Avoid this by going over the entire application with your client before the interview, and take notes as to required edits. State these on a single sheet of paper – referencing the Part and Question where the update is required, and then stating the correct/updated information that goes there - which you’ll hand to the officer when they begin reviewing the I-589. Just say, “I listed for you the required updates and corrections, in case it’s helpful – here you go.” This makes the officer’s job easier, which helps your client.

(2) Personal statement

The personal statement – sometimes called a “declaration” or “narrative” – is your client’s chance to tell their story uninterrupted, and on their own terms. It ensures that everything the officer needs to know to make a decision is actually considered. It’s a crucial part of an asylum application packet, and it’s usually done poorly. Do it well, and your client’s case will stand out. Here are a few tips for the perfect personal statement:

• Tell the truth. It seems obvious, but you do need to stress this to your client. Impress upon them the importance of not including anything that’s not 100% true and correct, or which could potentially be misleading.

• Keep the overall objective in mind. That objective is to (a) demonstrate that your client is at risk of being seriously harmed, and (b) show what it is about them (i.e., their possession of a protected characteristic) that’s motivating the persecutors to target them.

• The structure should be: o A few sentences of introduction/ background/context o Discussion of incidents and circumstances that show why it’s reasonable for your client to fear returning to their country (this should be about 80% of the personal statement). o A few sentences on why they finally decided to leave their country, how they did so, and why they can’t avoid future harm by internally relocating in their country o A few sentences on how they’ve been affected by what they endured in their country • Keep it short. Three pages single-spaced, maximum. I can’t tell you how annoying it is to get a 20-page personal statement. When that happens, only maybe 10% of it is actually relevant to the claim. Long personal statements either don’t get read at all or at least don’t get read carefully.

• Don’t talk about every bad thing that’s happened. If your client has endured many instances of physical harm or threats, give a timeframe for those things, give a best guess as to how many times each occurred (e.g., “at least 20 times…”), and then use the first/last/worst framework – discuss in detail the first such incident, the last one, and the worst (i.e., most severe) occurrence. (It’s of course OK to deviate from that approach if other instances better illustrate things that you need to show in your client’s case. Just don’t feel like your client should be addressing in detail all instances of harm or threats.)

• In recounting an incident of harm, state: o When it happened o Where the client was when it happened o What the persecutors said immediately before, during and after it o What they did, exactly (be specific: “they beat me” is useless) o Describe the client’s injuries and how they treated them

Remember that asylum can be granted without a shred of evidence.”

• Style and tone matter. Use short paragraphs. It shouldn’t ooze emotion. Leave the lawyering to the lawyer. The personal statement should focus on the client and what it is about them in particular and that puts them at risk. It’s the lawyer’s job to connect the dots – to apply the facts to the law.

(3) Supporting Evidence

Evidence is, generally speaking, overrated. Asylum Officers don’t tend to give it all that much weight. Yes, do try to provide documents that speak to any key issue or support a proposition that may be in question, but don’t spend too much time focusing on proof. Usually, a letter or two from a key witness is sufficient. Remember that asylum can be granted without a shred of evidence as long as the testimony during the interview is (i) detailed, (ii) consistent, and (iii) plausible.

(4) Legal Brief

I was surprised to see as an Asylum Officer that lawyers don’t normally submit a brief or anything in writing explaining why their client should get asylum. That’s a huge missed opportunity. On the rare occasions when a well-written brief did land on my desk, it made a huge impact.

Your brief is your chance to give the officer a roadmap that will take them to a grant of asylum – it’s your way to have them fully understand the key elements of the claim and to see how all the requirement asylum elements are satisfied before your client’s big day at the asylum office.

You should write a concise, short brief – not more than about six pages, single-spaced – that goes through the asylum elements. Don’t waste space reciting the “refugee definition” and other such legal formalities that you might be expected to include in an immigration court brief. Rather, cite to legal authorities sparingly. Use them only to argue a point that may actually be in question. Try not to use legal jargon. I prefer to use footnotes rather than inline citations, because I want to maximize the chances that the officer will actually read the document carefully, and readability goes a long way to that end.

I want the officer to be able to literally “ copy from my brief and paste into their assessment. ”

Note that, after every interview, the Asylum Officer has to write an “assessment,” in which they set forth the facts of the case, state their decision, and explain how they got there. I want the officer to be able to literally copy from my brief and paste into their assessment. Do it right, and you may be able to write the officer’s decision for them.

For cases with a confusing timeline or where lots of things have happened over an extended timeframe, consider submitting a timeline. The first thing that many officers do upon reviewing an application and accompanying personal statement is to pull out all the dates and create a timeline. Do this for them. You can use a tool like lucidchart.com to make it aesthetically pleasing.

(5) Country of Origin Information

“Country of origin information” (COI) or “country conditions information” refers to reports or news articles that speak to the conditions in a country. It may be relevant to establishing an element in an asylum claim. For example, where the persecutor is a private actor rather than a government agent, you’ve got to show that the authorities are “unable or unwilling” to control the persecutor. COI, as it’s referred to in the asylum office, helps you do that. It’s also key to demonstrating that there exists in your client’s country a pattern or practice of persecution of similarly situated persons on account of a protected ground, which is necessary if your client hasn’t been threatened and there’s no reason to believe they’re already on the persecutors’ radar. But to be clear, just slapping the State Department’s Human

Rights Report behind an asylum application does virtually nothing for your client. An Asylum Officer almost certainly will not consider COI that’s stuffed in the application packet without any context/ They're too busy to wade through hundreds of pages of government and NGO reports.

If you want to influence them with COI, you have to show them exactly where to look. Do that by citing to it in your brief, and by providing in the citation the exact page number of the operative language. Bates number the COI, and have a table of contents for it. Then, in the COI, literally highlight the relevant portions.

For long reports, I don’t include the whole thing, but rather just relevant portions. I think having a huge case file is counterproductive from a psychological standpoint.

Try to use authoritative resources for your COI. A couple good aggregators for human rights reports are ecoi. net and refworld.org. Asylum Officers are taught to use those sites. Other governments put together reports that can be helpful, including UK, Canadian, Australian and Norwegian immigration services.

About the Author

Brian Manning is a political asylum lawyer. He launched his law firm, Manning Asylum Law, in January 2020, after working for 11 years at the government’s two main agencies for asylum and refugee affairs.

Brian served for over two years at the Houston Asylum Office, including as an Asylum Officer and a Congressional Liaison. Prior to his work at the Asylum Office, Brian spent over eight years as a diplomat with the U.S. Department of State. During postings in Europe and South America, he adjudicated thousands of visa applications, spanning the range of immigrant and nonimmigrant classifications. Brian’s work with the State Department focused on immigration, rule of law, and international security.

Brian speaks Spanish fluently, and speaks Russian, Croatian and Bulgarian to varying degrees of fluency. He lives in the Houston, Texas area with his wife and two children. https://www.manningasylumlaw.com