Howard Berman: “Mr. Speaker, section 101, the asylum provisions, are flawed. Existing law exempts and prohibits terrorists or threats to…”

“Mr. Speaker, section 101, the asylum provisions, are flawed. Existing law exempts and prohibits terrorists or threats to national security or those who the government can prove through secret evidence are threats to national security from getting asylum. That is existing law. This self-executing rule, which allows amendments which have never been considered by any committee or heard through hearing or markup, do several dangerous things. Section 101 encourages asylum officers and immigration judges to deny an asylum claim simply because the applicant was able to recall or recount information later in the process that she did not mention when she was initially encountered by immigration officers. The amendment included in the rule would expand that to include consistency on matters that are entirely relevant to the basis of the claim for asylum. It would mean that a woman who has been subjected to gang rape by government armed forces in her country who is too afraid or ashamed to tell the fact to the armed male immigration officer she first encounters at the airport in the United States could, if she tells the story later on in the process, be denied asylum simply because she was too afraid or too ashamed to tell the story to the first person she encountered.”