asylum system

Attorney General William Barr announced July 15 a new Trump Administration plan, effective the next day, barring Central American immigrants from seeking asylum in the United States unless they seek it first in other Central American countries, a move that a Washington University in St. Louis immigration expert says “violates the clear language of the law.”

LegomskyA recent academic study confirmed empirically what many immigration experts had already suspected: The chance of winning an asylum case often hinges as much on the luck of the draw as on the merits of the case. Some adjudicators grant asylum liberally while others grant it only rarely, and the disparities are dramatic. The Stanford Law Review asked Stephen Legomsky, J.D., D.Phil., leading immigration and asylum law expert and John S. Lehmann University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, to write an article analyzing the policy implications of this study. Legomsky offers a controversial conclusion: “There are times when we simply have to learn to live with unequal justice because the alternatives are worse.”