Got referred to see a judge

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Daniela&Tendai

Registered Users (C)
Hello all,
I've been reading the forum and it's awesome, so I thought I'd write about my case too, get some advice maybe...

My husband is from ZImbabwe, came here in 2002 on F1, in 2007 the visa expired, and by the time he realized, it was too late to do anything about it, so he's out of status now. I'm on F1 as well, in good standing. I'm from Europe. We applied for asylum, had the interview 2 weeks ago and got the decision last Friday. We did not get denied, but got refered to a judge. We applied on 3 basis: political opinion, membership in a particular social group, and nationality (because of me).

We applied because of Changed Conditions in my husband's country, but the Referral Notice does not mention anything on that. It says my husband did not establish he is refugee because of past persecution and the application was filed untimely and there are no changed or extraordinary circumstances which would result in the application being excepted from the 1 year rule.

Now, I understand all that, but our lawyer explained us that Changed Conditions in your country and/or personal life allows you to apply after 1 year. If you look at Zimbabwe in 2002, the MDC was just starting to form, not much was going on. If you look now, it's almost a war in there. My husband is the Vice-Chairman for the YOuth Party here in the US, we had more than enough evidence to support that and all the work that he's doing for his country, plus letters of recomandation for MDC-USA Chairman and Secretary of Assylum stating that if he's going back home he's in danger of being kidnapped, beaten, jail time, and even death.

SO with all that, we were still not granted. Anybody has any opinions on it? Do you think we're gonna have a better chance in front of the judge? We're also changing the lawyer, because we were not happy with his work.

Sorry for the long post, and thank you if you took the time to read it.

Have a good evening everybody!
Daniela
 
I am sorry to hear that it did not work out this time. You have to remember that the Asylum Offices are designed to promptly approve only cases that are very strong. They will refer cases below that threshhold to immigration courts which can examine the cases in more detail. Many people whose cases are referred to court are granted asylum by immigration judges. So you should not be discouraged. You should find a good lawyer who can go to bat for you in front of the judge.
 
Thanks for your encouragements, "thankful". When we got our result my husband and i were kinda crushed, we really thought we're going to get it, and our lawyer did not tell us that if you are out of status your chances are pretty low and truth is, we didn't make much research on the subject. Now we have our hopes back and started working on the case again. So hopefully one day, someday...:)
 
Asylum is a really tricky situation, make sure the lawyer you're dealing with knows all the details about the country you're from and have even taken few cases from that country.

But, I wish you good luck...
 
Thanks a lot GCman. We called a lawyer that's been recommended to us by several people and will get an appointment with her and HOPE for the BEST. Our problem at the beginning was that we rellied so much on our other lawyer, didn't do much research, we were pretty confident on our case, so when we didn't get it, we were shocked. Lesson learned the hard way!
 
It will help your cause if you can prove circumstantial change on the part of your husband like with a PSTD report to show how he has been traumatized by happenings in Zimbabwe. You will need an expect report by a psych-dr to examine your husband and prove that the happenings in Zimbabwe affected him and he was hapless as well. This he must prove that he lost time and delayed submitting his application because of this mental problem.This is normally well considered favourably in the asylum case where you apply outside the one year time frame.
They he must site the WORSENING situation in Zimbabwe through the Human Rights reports abundant on line. He may site other less dangerous people than him that have been persecuted in Zimbabwe that will help prove he is in big danger.
 
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