According to a new report, one in five refugees is denied asylum
because they did not apply within one year of arriving in the U.S. and
missed the 12-month deadline required by Congress. The report states
that in 46 percent of applications denied because they were submitted
late, the Board of Immigration Appeals provided only one reason for the
application’s denial – that it was submitted after the filing deadline.
The report was published by Heartland Alliance’s National Immigration
Justice Center and Penn State Law’s Center for Immigrants’ Rights. It
is available online at www.immigrantjustice.org/oneyeardeadline.
The one-year deadline law was passed by Congress in 1996 and requires
asylum seekers to either establish clearly and convincingly that their
applications were filed within one year of their arrival or that their
applications were delayed due to extraordinary circumstances.
