Abstract
Fraud in the asylum context has long concerned U.S. government officials, and rightfully so. Changes in the law, such as imposing a one year filing deadline, mandating short processing times, and eliminating automatic eligibility for employment authorization have reduced the incentives to commit fraud. The REAL ID Act of 2005 modified the asylum laws to allow immigration judges to require asylum applicants to provide more corroboration of the asylum application. The new law also made it easier for immigration judges to find asylum applicants not credible by allowing even minor inconsistencies to support an immigration judge's adverse credibility determination. In Asylum Profiles and through cables from some U.S. Consulates, the U.S. Department of State ("DOS") sometimes estimates a high incidence of fraud in asylum cases based on asylee relative interviews and the number and percentage of documents determined to be fraudulent. In this Article, I posit that some immigration judges react to reports of a high incidence of fraud by taking illegitimate administrative notice of fraud rates and adjudicative facts, impose non-statutory presumptions of fraud and surreptitiously raising the standard of proof, and by generally discrediting the applicant due to a high degree of fraud instead of making an individualized determination. How do these heightened requirements mesh with the realities facing asylum-seekers?