Access to Justice at the Asylum Office

This dissertation focuses on legal representation and interpretation, which are arguably two of the most salient factors in guaranteeing an asylum seeker’s due process rights. Nevertheless, current United States law dictates that the burden is upon asylum seekers to find and pay for their own attorneys and interpreters at the Asylum Office. This dissertation’s first article uses mixed methods to assess the relationship between legal representation and case outcomes at the Asylum Office, and whether this relationship is consistent across all eight asylum offices. This dissertation’s second article analyzes 28 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with immigration attorneys to better understand their case acceptance policies, how they conceptualize high-quality legal representation, best practices for the preparation of asylum cases, and their views of the quality-level of the private immigration bar. This dissertation’s third article analyzes the same 28 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, but focuses on a subset of interview questions that query how asylum officers exercise their discretion to provide asylum applicants with interpreters, whether this discretion is exercised in a uniform manner, and how interpreters affect the dynamics of asylum interviews. These three dissertation articles have normative as well as theoretical implications. From a normative perspective, this dissertation informs current initiatives to provide indigent immigrants with legal representation by analyzing the relationship between legal counsel and asylum outcomes. This dissertation also discusses the qualities and best practices that immigration attorneys view as indispensable to providing high-quality representation, as well as the challenges of interpretation at the Asylum Office. From a theoretical perspective, this dissertation argues that more rigorous quantitative analyses need to be conducted before academics and advocates can conclusively infer the relationship between legal representation and asylum outcomes at the Asylum Office. This dissertation also emphasizes the need for additional dialogue around how to conceptualize the quality of legal representation in order to ensure equitable asylum case outcomes. Finally, this dissertation highlights the importance of securing competent interpretation services at the Asylum Office.