Immigration system’s weak link, understanding translation’s limits

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

Courts of appeal have criticized immigration courts for their skills in adjudicating asylum cases, including the alarming observation, “…the adjudication of these cases at the administrative level has fallen below the minimum standards of legal justice.” The criticisms suggest incompetence by immigration judges, They are generally unsympathetic to the difficultly of the job immigration judges do. In four hours or less, an immigration judge must listen to the testimony of witnesses, integrate the testimony with written material presented by the…