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Abstract:
In the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007, Congress has created the income-based repayment (IBR) plan for student loans, through which graduates with high debts and low incomes may substantially reduce their monthly loan repayment obligations. Congress has also created a public service loan forgiveness plan, through which the federal government will forgive the remaining debt of borrowers who make 120 IBR (or certain other) payments while serving full time in public service jobs (very broadly defined). These programs are available to those who borrowed for graduate and professional training as well as for undergraduate education. These two programs will be of great value to public interest lawyers because of their typically high debts and low incomes, but they will also significantly assist social workers, government employees, soldiers, nurses, doctors, teachers, and many others who work in non-profit organizations and government agencies. This article explains why Congress created these two related programs, demonstrates the magnitude of the benefits available to representative borrowers, and outlines how graduates can obtain these benefits. It also elaborates how, even before the income-based repayment plan becomes effective in 2009, public service employees may make monthly repayments that will help to qualify them for eventual loan forgiveness. Finally, the article discusses the need for additional legislation to enable these new programs to achieve their objectives fully.

Student Loans, Loan Forgiveness, Public Service, Public Interest Law

Abstract:
This study analyzes databases of merits decisions from all four levels of the asylum adjudication process: 133,000 decisions by 884 asylum officers over a seven year period; 140,000 decisions of 225 immigration judges over a four-and-a-half year period; 126,000 decisions of the Board of Immigration Appeals over six years; and 4215 decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeal during 2004 and 2005. The analysis reveals significant disparities in grant rates, even when different adjudicators in the same office each considered large numbers of applications from nationals of the same country. In many cases, the most important moment in an asylum case is the instant in which a clerk randomly assigns an application to a particular asylum officer or immigration judge.

Using cross-tabulations based on public biographies, the paper also explores correlations between sociological characteristics of individual immigration judges and their grant rates. The cross tabulations show that the chance of winning asylum was strongly affected by whether or not the applicant had legal representation, by the gender of the immigration judge, and by the immigration judge's work experience prior to appointment.

In their conclusion, the authors do not recommend enforced quota systems for asylum adjudicators, but they do make recommendations for more comprehensive training, more effective and independent appellate review, and other reforms that would further professionalize the adjudication system.

immigration law, asylum law, refugee, consistency, asylum office, immigration court, Executive Office of Immigration Review, Board of Immigration Appeals, judicial decision-making

Abstract:
In 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). This article discusses how two specific provisions of the IIRIRA - the one-year deadline on asylum applications and the expedited removal provisions - unnecessarily cause hardship and injustice to asylum-seekers. It also assesses the response of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and suggests needed regulatory and statutory reform. Recognizing that even regulatory reforms will not eliminate many of the injustices caused by the IIRIRA, the article recommends enactment of the Refugee Protection Act, currently pending in Congress.

First, the article discussed the one year filing deadline and some of the changes that have been made to it since its introduction in the IIRIRA in 1996. The one-year deadline for asylum seekers requires asylum seekers to apply for asylum within one year from their time of entry into the United States. The authors recommend that if the deadline is not repealed, the existing exceptions for "extraordinary" and "changed" circumstances should be augmented to include delayed awareness of changed country conditions, threats to an applicant's family living abroad, and genuine belated discovery of the law. They also recommend changes in the regulatory definition of the exception for ineffective assistance of counsel.

Second, the article discusses the IIRIRA's grant of authority to the INS to engage in expedited removal. Under the expedited removal provisions, an individual who is detained at the United States border because he or she does not have the proper documentation to enter, may be immediately deported at the discretion of the INS inspector back to his or her home country without an administrative or judicial hearing. The article preliminary states that expedited removal should be limited to extraordinary migrantion situations. It then discusses specifically what can be done at each stage of interrogation of the asylum-seeker by INS inspectors to make the system fairer for asylum-seekers. For example, the authors recommend numerous changes to the secondary-inspection stage of the removal process, where airport-based inspectors determine if a refugee is afraid of returning home. The authors also point out the need for numerous improvements to be made at the stage of the process during which INS determines whether aliens have a "credible fear" of persecution, permitting them to apply for asylum before an Immigration Judge.

The article concludes with strong support for the pending Refugee Protection Act.

Immigration, Refugee, Refugee Protection Act

Abstract:
This is the inaugural address for the Delaney Family Professorship in Public Interest Law at Georgetown University Law Center. It elaborates ten reasons why law graduates might want to enter into long-term careers as public interest lawyers.

public interest, public service, careers, law students