ADMINISTRATIVE POLICY MAKING: ADJUDICATION BY THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS IN ASYLUM-RELATED APPEALS 1980–1987 |
| |
| Authors: | Barbara M. Yarnold |
| |
| Affiliation: | received a J.D. from DePaul University School of Law and a Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis/Political Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has practiced general corporate law and immigration law. She is Assistant Professor of Public Administration at Florida International University in North Miami, Florida. She has pub- lished a book entitled Refugees Without Refuge (University Press of America 1990), presented papers at national and regional political science conferences, and published articles in journals. |
| |
| Abstract: | This analysis examines the extent to which the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), from 1980 to 1987, complied with a new policy of Congress, set forth in the Refugee Act of 1980, which called for an elimination of bias in favor of aliens from hostile countries. Statistical analysis reveals that the BIA did not enforce the Refugee Act of 1980. I argue that Congress never intended to eliminate this bias since doing so would bring it into conflict with actors within the executive branch (including the President and the State Department) that have traditionally dominated policy-making relating to refugees and asylees. Instead, in the Refugee Act of 1980, Congress allowed these actors to retain control through a broad definition of "refugee" and by failing to clearly specify standards for political asylum and withholding of deportation. Simultaneously, Congress temporarily placated private and public "refugee rights" interest groups with statutory provisions that (presumably) eliminated the hostile country bias in U.S. refugee and asylum admis- sions, and granted increased federal aid to private organizations and units of state and local governments. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
|
|
