Asylum

In response to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Justice and the Department of State practices and procedures in judging applications for asylum in the United States, specifically from Central America.

GAO noted that the asylum application approval rates for the four countries it reviewed ranged from 2 and 7 percent for El Salvador and Nicaragua to 49 and 66 percent for Poland and Iran. GAO found that: (1) it could not determine whether the difference in approval rates reflected a bias in the application of asylum standards because the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) did not document the reasons why it approved or denied applications; (2) INS district directors and Justice immigration judges, in ruling on asylum applications, assessed the credibility of the evidence the applicants presented, but, there were no uniform standards for evidence needed to prove that an applicant was eligible for asylum; (3) although Justice regulations required immigration judges to provide an oral or written record of the evidence they used in granting or denying asylum, INS district directors and State officials did not have to explain their decisions; (4) INS deported about 2 percent of the denied aliens, 13 percent remained in the United States either awaiting hearings or under other immigration provisions, a negligible percent left voluntarily, and 80 percent had uncertain immigration status because INS had not started deportation proceedings; and (5) INS was unable to locate and routinely deport denied applicants.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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