Political Asylum in the United States.

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Interview: Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini, the directors
of the documentary "Well-Founded Fear," discuss the film and the
issue of political asylum
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

As we hear the news about Elian Gonzalez and the Haitian refugees who were
shipwrecked while trying to make their way to the US, a new documentary is
exploring the issue of political asylum in the US: Who deserves asylum, who
gets it and who decides? The film's title, "Well-Founded Fear," comes from
the criteria used to determine if someone is worthy. Asylum seekers must
demonstrate a well-founded fear that if they return to their country, they
will be persecuted for their political opinions, nationality, religion, race
or social group. The documentary will be shown this weekend at the
Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema and will be broadcast on the PBS P.O.V.
Series on June 5th. A little later, we'll talk about the difficulties of
determining who gets asylum with a former asylum officer.

My first guests are the directors of "Well-Founded Fear," Shari Robertson and
Michael Camerini. They obtained permission to film within the offices of the
Immigration and Naturalization Service. Asylum seekers must already be in the
US. Many are here illegally. I asked Michael Camerini about the origins of
asylum.

Mr. MICHAEL CAMERINI ("Well-Founded Fear"): Asylum's origins have--I mean, in
its sort of modern legal form, have to do with the fact that this country and
many other countries sent people back, sent Jews back to Germany to their
death, that there was a period where countries were perfectly comfortable
refusing entry to people who were in desperate danger. And it's sort of the
memory and the history of that that created modern asylum. It's this idea that
you won't send somebody back to trouble.

GROSS: So the idea of asylum is pretty new?

Ms. SHARI ROBERTSON ("Well-Founded Fear"): As an idea, it's not especially
new. As a codified international treaty, it dates back, I think, to 1951. It
was drawn up as part of the Geneva Convention.

Mr. CAMERINI: You know, we always say the pilgrims, if they arrived today,
would be absolutely qualified for asylum, so it's a long tradition in this
country.

GROSS: Your film focuses around interviews conducted by asylum officers with
people seeking asylum. What was the typical interview process like? How
would you describe it after having observed many of them?

Ms. ROBERTSON: Well, the typical asylum interview takes place on a day when
the officer has at least two other interviews to do that morning, so they tend
to run around an hour, although there's no set limit. The officer has a few
minutes to look over a file before they walk out into a waiting room full of
people from everywhere and usually mispronounce a name of somebody from
another place. And then they go in together. The applicant may have a
lawyer or may have a translator, but they sit across a desk and the officer
checks on the information that's been submitted in a file and then pretty
much, in an individual way, does a small interview to try to find out whether
the applicant actually has an asylum claim and then whether the claim that
they are presenting is, in fact, true.

Mr. CAMERINI: You've got an hour and you're asking someone about their life
and you need to figure out where to ask your question, what to focus on. And
we saw a huge range of interview styles, and people come with their life
story, and for many people, what happened to their parents is part of their
history in terms of their relationship with their government, and many people
want to start telling you the month by month story beginning in 1947. The
officer's got to figure out how to get to the answer, which is, `Do I believe
this person? Does this person qualify? Did what happened to them--does it
fit the law? Should they still be afraid, even if they were afraid before?'
There's this mental calculation you can see each officer do. What's going to
help me figure out whether this person goes in this basket or this basket?

GROSS: Well, much of your movie, "Well-Founded Fear," focuses around
interviews between caseworkers for the Immigration and Naturalization Service
and men and women who are seeking asylum in the United States. I thought I'd
play a short example of one of these encounters. We're going to hear from
Anna Maria, a woman from Romania, who's seeking asylum in the United States on
the grounds that she says she was discriminated against because of her
religion, which is Anglican. The caseworker interviewing her is named Peter.

(Soundbite from "Well-Founded Fear")

ANNA MARIA: My difficulties start after they officially knew that I'm a
member of the Anglican Church. My husband was stopped on the street one night
when he came home and he was severely beaten.

PETER: When was this?

ANNA MARIA: In November.

PETER: Of '96?

ANNA MARIA: Of '96, yes. And he was thought...

PETER: You going to put that--oh, OK.

ANNA MARIA: ...and he was told that he--he was told, in his faith--when he
run because he managed to run. He defend himself and he managed to run.
Otherwise, he would have been more severely beaten, and he was told that he
was beaten because of me. It was an advertisement given to me, and if I were
to return to Romania, I will be raped and he will be killed. After that, my
house was searched, and also, they wrote on my walls, `Out, you Anglican.'

PETER: OK. And at one point did you inform them that you were Anglican?

ANNA MARIA: I didn't show them any paper. I was not supposed to do that, to
show them papers that I'm Anglican, that I was received or that...

PETER: What was said in casual conversation.

ANNA MARIA: Yes, it was--you ask me when it was the first time. They have
found exactly and officially that I'm Anglican.

PETER: How did they find that out?

ANNA MARIA: We'll get to that point. After my bags were...

Unidentified Man #1: Answer the question.

PETER: No, no, this...

ANNA MARIA: Oh, after my bags...

PETER: But this is my interview, not yours. OK.

ANNA MARIA: Yeah.

PETER: How did--don't worry, she's not antagonizing me. Don't worry about
it.

Unidentified Man #1: OK. Oh.

PETER: I just want to backtrack a little bit. One thing I wanted to ask you
before...

ANNA MARIA: Yeah.

PETER: ...and I had forgot, what are the sacraments that the Anglican Church
recognizes?

ANNA MARIA: It's Holy Communion and it's Holy Trinity.

PETER: OK. In what language was the Anglican service...

ANNA MARIA: In English.

PETER: ...conducted in Romania?

ANNA MARIA: In English.

PETER: Who is the head of the Anglican Church?

ANNA MARIA: The head of the Anglican Church in Romania is...

PETER: Overall.

ANNA MARIA: Overall is a bishop, Bishop of Gibraltar he's called. Now he's
Bishop John of Gibraltar.

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Well, that's an except of the documentary "Well-Founded Fear" about
asylum, and my guests are the filmmakers Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini.
Now listening to that, you know, when I was watching your movie, I was
thinking, you know, `How would I decide? Do I think she's credible?' And,
you know, she's not being very dramatic. She's not crying. A lot of the
people really just kind of lose control and break down as they're recounting
their story. She seems a little hesitant when discussing what the sacraments
are. So, you know, you are probably wondering a little bit how true is the
story she's telling. The caseworker didn't grant her asylum. He referred her
to a judge, who would then decide. I think 90 percent of the time, when it's
referred to a judge, the person is turned down. Let me play the clip from
your documentary in which he explains some of his reasons for turning her down
for asylum.

(Soundbite from "Well-Founded Fear")

PETER: I can understand her desire to stay here. She could make a much
better life for herself here, but that's not grounds for asylum. A lot of
people would like to come here and better their lives, but it's not grounds
for asylum. How many Anglicans do you know don't know that the Archbishop of
Canterbury is the head of the Anglican Church? And how many Anglicans do you
know don't know the sacraments in the Anglican Church if she claims that she
went there every week and took Communion?

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Well, let me ask you, what happened to his decision?

Mr. CAMERINI: His decision was reversed in court. We were in correspondence
with Bishop John, who sent us back an e-mail to our phrasing of the officer's
question. He said, `Of course, the head of the Anglican Church is our Lord,
Jesus Christ. But after that, the bishops are a college among equals, and it
isn't like the Catholic Church.' And, in fact, there is a Bishop John called
the Bishop of Gibraltar; although he lives in a suburb of London, and he is,
in fact, the head of all Anglican churches in continental Europe. And the
Archbishop of Canterbury is first among equals. So at some level, they're
both right.

There's sort of a clarifying thing one should say. The law gives you a second
chance if you're turned down, and it's a de novo hearing. So, in theory, the
judge made his own mind up not necessarily on the basis of the same set of
questions. Recent legislation has moved the American system away from that,
towards less review, towards one person alone really making the decision.
That's the subtext of the movie, if you like, the dangers of that.

GROSS: For an asylum case officer who's hearing a story that sounds, you
know, murky, ambiguous--they're not sure whether they're getting the truth or
not--what does the law say about doubt? Which side do you rule on?

Ms. ROBERTSON: The instructions and the training to asylum officers are very
clear. If you are doubtful, if you cannot be certain, you should grant.
There aren't that many officers who necessarily uphold that at the highest
level.

GROSS: My guests are Michael Camerini and Shari Robertson, directors of the
new documentary "Well-Founded Fear." More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guests, Michael Camerini and Shari Robertson, made the new
documentary, "Well-Founded Fear," about political asylum in the US. What
percentage of people who apply for asylum are actually granted it?

Ms. ROBERTSON: The asylum corps, as you see it in the movie, has only been in
existence for about 10 years. When they started, you could get work
authorization by applying for asylum, so an awful lot of people had
applications sent in who didn't even know they were applying for asylum, and
that meant that the grant rate was pretty low. When we were shooting in 1997
and '98, the average nationwide was about 20 percent who were granted. I
think it's gone up since we finished shooting because there have been a lot of
restrictions imposed on who can apply, and many fewer people are applying, but
about 30 percent are being granted now.

GROSS: What happens to the people who are denied asylum?

Mr. CAMERINI: If you're denied asylum in this affirmative process, you can
appeal. If you are turned down by the judge, there are still some avenues of
appeal. Very often, people agree to voluntary departure. The truth is that
we are, as a country, deporting large numbers of people, but the concentration
of the INS has been on people who have a criminal record. The '96 law made
that a pretty loose definition so that people are being deported if they are
here and 10 years ago they committed a relatively minor offense. But the
problem is if you're like Christian Jikman(ph) in the film, if you're a person
who has built up a life here while waiting for their interview or you have
kids in school or you're paying taxes, life becomes very, very difficult. If
you're a young person who's working hourly labor, going underground is
certainly what you're likely to do.

GROSS: Do you mean remain here as an illegal?

Mr. CAMERINI: Right.

Ms. ROBERTSON: Well, you're really worse off than if you were just here as
an illegal or an undocumented person because that way, you can remain fairly
anonymous. Once you've applied for asylum, your fingerprints are on file and
you've been ordered to leave, so if you are picked up for anything, you're
pretty likely to be put into detention and then deported.

GROSS: So your film about asylum, "Well-Founded Fear," has recently been
released against the backdrop of the Elian Gonzalez story. So having immersed
yourself in issues pertaining to immigration and asylum, what are your
thoughts on the Elian Gonzalez story?

Ms. ROBERTSON: If Elian were another little boy from another place--Haiti,
the Dominican Republic--this story would have never become a story. He would
have been dried off and taken care of and sent home within a matter of hours.
Cuba's always had a special relationship with the United States, and Cubans
who've come here have been a very particular group in terms of asylum and
immigration issues. But I don't think most people were aware of that until
Elian came along.

Mr. CAMERINI: In a way, one of the things that prompted us to make this film
was the realization that until the end of the Cold War, there was this kind of
secret pact. The bad guys wouldn't let their people out, and every time one
of them came here, we gave them asylum, and we got points for it. After the
Cold War, you don't get points anymore. People are on the move all over, and
there's no geopolitical benefit. It's just about your commitment to human
rights, as a country. And the Elian Gonzalez case is this case out of that
other history. It really isn't about the modern reality of asylum, which is
Americans aren't aware of the institution. There is no political advantage,
and fear about immigration and the anti-immigration lobby leads Congress to
compromise on human rights of refugees.

GROSS: Well, when you say that it used to more clear-cut, if you were from a
bad guy country, we'd accept you and get points, but, by that, you mean if you
were from a Communist nation and the Communists were our enemy, we would
accept you.

Mr. CAMERINI: Exactly.

GROSS: And now that the Cold War is over, the world isn't divided that way
anymore.

Ms. ROBERTSON: We used to call them defectors, and there were ballet dancers
from Russia and there were musicians from Eastern Europe. But there weren't
very many at all.

GROSS: But now that civil war is tearing up such a good part of the world and
people are desperate to get out of their countries, it's very different.

Ms. ROBERTSON: It's very different, and civil war is a particularly
interesting part of the asylum question, because unless you can prove that you
were persecuted for something to do with you individually, personally, the
civil war is almost the worst place to come from and ask for asylum.

GROSS: Because it's just a condition of life there. It has nothing to do
with your individual persecution.

Mr. CAMERINI: Right, the burden of proof is much, much higher. So even if
your life is in real danger, you have a harder time proving that you deserve
asylum than a person who was beaten up in the Soviet Union because they were
Jewish, for example.

GROSS: I want to thank you both very much for talking with us.

Ms. ROBERTSON: Thank you, Terry.

GROSS: Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini's film "Well-Founded Fear" will
be shown on the PBS P.O.V. Series June 5th.

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Interview: Gerald Brown, former asylum officer with the INS,
discusses the issue of political asylum and the documentary
"Well-Founded Fear," in which he's featured
TERRY GROSS, host:

My guest, Gerald Brown, was an asylum officer with the INS from 1994 to '98.
He's featured in the documentary "Well-Founded Fear." He now works as a
consultant with refugee and immigration programs. Brown has worked with
refugees for most of his career. I asked him why he wanted to work as an
asylum officer.

Mr. GERALD BROWN ("Well-Founded Fear"): Because I think that the asylum
officer's job is very important, and in a lot of ways, it's the best job I
ever had. You get to study country conditions. You get to study the law, and
you get to apply it to refugees and determine their fates. So for a lot of
reasons, I thought it was a great job.

GROSS: Well, you know, in the film, "Well-Founded Fear," some of the asylum
officers expressed the opinion that they were lied to a fair amount by people
seeking asylum, who embellished or altered their story to fit with the
regulations to qualify for asylum. Did you feel that way, that people often
lied to you?

Mr. BROWN: Yes. I think it's very clear that the majority of cases, you see
people are, you know, lying or enhancing the truth because they desperately
want asylum. But that doesn't mean, number one, that they don't deserve
asylum, and it certainly doesn't mean that they're bad people. I mean, most
people in this world are just trying to get what you and I already have. You
know, we live in a place where we can pretty much do whatever we want to with
our lives, if we're willing to work for it. And that's a rarity in this
world. So one of the most important things that an asylum officer needed to
do was to be able to listen to three people, you know, lie, and then when the
fourth person was interviewed, to be able to listen to them in such a way that
you didn't assume that they were lying. And if you determined the person was
lying, you had to make a decision of whether it was relevant to the case. You
know, often, the lies had nothing to do with whether they were, you know, real
refugees or not.

GROSS: You mean, they might be persecuted for their religion and they're
embellishing it with lies, but even if you strip the lies away, they're still
being persecuted for their religion.

Mr. BROWN: Yes, ma'am, or they were persecuted for something else, and some,
you know, shady lawyer or preparer, you know, told them to say something else.
So our job was to strip through all the stuff and try to find out the truth of
whether these folks had a well-founded fear of persecution because of one of
the five grounds.

GROSS: So you're saying that these people are often coached a lot by...

Mr. BROWN: Yes.

GROSS: ...their lawyers and the coaching isn't sometimes very good.

Mr. BROWN: Well, right. And it's not only lawyers, but preparers, people in
the community that, you know, they found their way to who helped them prepare
their asylum application. A Chinese person, for example, who might have
suffered real persecution because he was Catholic and practices religion, but
the preparer would say, `No, no, don't say that. Say that you were being
persecuted because of the one-child policy,' because, you know, and the person
having no clue, would do what the preparer said.

GROSS: So...

Mr. BROWN: Does that make sense?

GROSS: Yeah. But how do you get the person to try to tell you the truth
after they've been coached to lie?

Mr. BROWN: Well, I guess, typically, you would tear down the lie and then,
you know, go on and say, `Listen, did anything else happen to you? What
really happened to you to make you leave your country?' And oftentimes, if
you are willing to do that, you know, the person would come up with a, you
know, very believable story. I think what the good officers do is, you know,
try to find out what the real story is.

GROSS: Gerald Brown is a former asylum officer with the INS. He'll be back
in the second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: Coming up, listening for the truth. We continue our interview with
Gerald Brown, a former asylum officer with the INS who interviewed refugees
seeking political asylum in this country and evaluated their stories. He's
featured in the new documentary, "Well-Founded Fear."

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Gerald Brown, who has
worked with refugees for most of his career. From 1994 to '98 he was an
asylum officer with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, where he
interviewed refugees seeking political asylum and determined whether to grant
them asylum. He's featured in the new documentary "Well-Founded Fear." Here's
a clip from the film featuring a different asylum officer interviewing a
refugee from El Salvador seeking political asylum.

(Soundbite from "Well-Founded Fear")

Unidentified Woman: (Through Translator) They took my brother's wife. She
was the only one in the house. They took her to a river, which name is El
Guatay(ph), close to that neighborhood. And there, they tortured her, we feel
'cause they want more information.

(Soundbite of sobbing)

Unidentified Officer: OK. Just take your time. Take your time.

Unidentified Translator: (Foreign language spoken)

Unidentified Officer: That's all right. Just take your time.

Unidentified Translator: Do you have a Kleenex?

Unidentified Officer: No. Ah, I have some Kleenex, right here.

Unidentified Translator: Thank you.

Unidentified Woman: (Through Translator) They tortured her.

Unidentified Officer: Mm-hmm.

Unidentified Woman: (Through Translator) They destroyed the--they opened the
face.

Unidentified Officer: Mm-hmm.

Unidentified Woman: (Through Translator) They put her down, face down.

Unidentified Officer: Mm-hmm.

Unidentified Woman: (Through Translator) And they gave her six shots in the
back.

GROSS: That was a refugee from El Salvador with her translator. Let's get
back to our interview with former asylum officer Gerald Brown. Now when you
were hearing all of these stories as an asylum officer--I mean, you're hearing
just heartrending stories. And, true, some of them are lies, but a lot of
them are true.

Mr. BROWN: Right.

GROSS: And it's your job to be as impartial and, really, as unemotional as
possible and just impartially evaluate what's true and who's worthy of asylum.
Is it hard to be that unemotional and impartial when you're hearing these
horrible, tragic stories?

Mr. BROWN: Well, I think that movie tells us very clearly that it is very,
very difficult, but not for the apparent reason. I mean, when you say that,
you probably mean, though, `Isn't it hard to not, you know--that'd you'd be so
upset. How do you make the decision?' But how it plays out is people
become--they use a cynicism as a defense mechanism. So people that you saw
that were very jaded in the film are jaded because they had to do something,
I think, to protect themselves from all the horror stories that they hear.
And one of the easiest ways to do that is say, `Oh, well, they're all lying,
anyways.' You know? And then you don't have to internalize all the pain that
you have to deal with.

GROSS: Did you often wonder how the refugees saw you? You know, in the
countries that they're fleeing from, the people in government capacity are
often the people who are out to get them or to persecute them. And here you
are representing the government, but you're trying to give them a fair
hearing. But maybe they saw you more the way they saw people in the
government of their home countries, as someone who's their enemy.

Mr. BROWN: Yeah. I think that's one of the fundamental difficulties, is, you
know, that you are dealing with people who are resentful of and afraid of
authority. You know, they come through the asylum officer's doors and there's
the big flag and the big seal, and there's an armed guard to meet them, and
they have to sit in this enclosed space. So, yeah, I think it's pretty hard
for them, you know, to be open and trustful.

GROSS: In the documentary `Well-Founded Fear," you're hearing the case of an
Algerian woman who's seeking asylum, and she feels that her life is in danger,
as are the lives of everyone in her family. And there's a part where she
tells her translator that her parents were well-known political activists, but
that part of the story doesn't really get translated to you. Did that affect
your decision to not give her asylum?

Mr. BROWN: Well, I didn't--are you saying that I didn't hear it in the
interview, it wasn't translated?

GROSS: Right.

Mr. BROWN: Well, obviously, that would have an effect. But if that had been
translated, I would try to make her tell me how, to demonstrate that that was
a fact, you know, that they were indeed politically prominent. And if I had
established that, then I very well may have granted her. Your point being
the translation's important, I suppose.

GROSS: Yeah. It must be very important.

Mr. BROWN: It is important. One of the basic decisions made when, you know,
the asylum court was put together was that the government couldn't afford to,
you know, furnish all these folks with translators, that they had to bring
their own. Well, this is how, you know, that money-saving effort kind of
backfires.

GROSS: Can you give us an example of someone who you really would have liked
to give asylum to, but technically you couldn't do it?

Mr. BROWN: Yeah. That lady.

GROSS: Well, tell us more, for our listeners who haven't seen the movie.
Tell us more about her story.

Mr. BROWN: Yeah. It was an Algerian woman who was obviously very upset, who
had one little child on her lap and had another one in her belly. And if you
could kind of, you know, follow your heart, she was an automatic grant. But
she did not establish, you know, a well-founded fear on account of the grounds
during the interview to my satisfaction, so I was obligated, in my mind, to,
you know, follow the law, which is the asylum officer's best friend. You've
got to apply the law or you get so, you know, far outside that you're lost
without hope. So you've got to follow the law all the time if you're gonna be
a good officer. And, you know, I did that. But I wished in my heart that I
could grant her.

GROSS: Yeah. In the film you say that you know that she's gonna face
problems, but it's just the typical problems that any woman in Algeria would
face.

Mr. BROWN: Well, it's not any woman.

GROSS: Any person. Any person.

Mr. BROWN: Yes, ma'am, 'cause if it had been woman, then that would have been
a different thing. But everybody who lives in Algeria lives under, you know,
a degree of fear, every single soul. And the law is that the circumstances
have to be unique in some way, specifically in the five ways that we've
listed. And I thought that she was afraid, but I didn't know that she was any
more afraid than the rest of the populace.

GROSS: You know, you have interviewed people from many different countries,
many different cultures. Were there certain things you started to learn about
cultural ways of telling a story, or cultural differences and what's private
and what's public, what you reveal and what you don't, that affected how you
interpreted the truthfulness of what somebody was telling you?

Mr. BROWN: Well, yeah. I mean, generally speaking, the answer is `of
course.' I'm trying to think of good examples. The one that comes to mind,
obviously, is, you know, as a man, you know, a First World white man
interviewing a Third World black woman about stuff that often had to do with
sexual abuse and stuff, you know, you needed to be--I mean, they told the
story differently than I would tell the story. Hopefully, because of my
experience and because, you know, I've got a lot of respect for what women in
general have to go through, I was sensitive to that and did, you know, a
fairly good job. That's one of the obvious areas.

GROSS: Mm-hmm. When you were an asylum officer and people would have to tell
you the story of how they were persecuted and why they fled their country,
what were some of the things that you observed about what it was like for
people to relive the story as they told it?

Mr. BROWN: Most people--there was a kid in the movie who kind of chuckled
when he talked about having to drink from a toilet, and they interviewed his
lawyer after. And I've heard that people have reacted--you know, have had
negative reactions, who have seen the film, to that kid, you know, saying
stuff like, `Well, he obviously was lying because he wouldn't be giggling.'
Well, that's not my experience. People did giggle. They'd get nervous and
they would act like that kid acted. I thought that was very authentic. You
had, also, the Salvadoran woman who was interviewed in the movie was typical
and very, very sad, I thought. She was shy but she was obviously very
distraught. And, you know, an asylum interview is one of the few times that
you do talk about things like that lady and like that kid went through. And
it is very, very touching. And you want to just hug them, you know, and make
everything all right. That's why it's so frustrating after going through an
interview like that when a supervisor tells you that it's not a grant, because
they weren't there. They didn't look in the eyes of the person, and they
don't know.

GROSS: My guest is Gerald Brown, a former asylum officer with the INS. More
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Gerald Brown, a former asylum officer with the INS. His
job was to interview refugees and determine whether they qualified for
political asylum in the US.

What percentage of the people whose stories you heard did you grant asylum to?

Mr. BROWN: Well, it was one of my problems. I granted more than most people
do. I might have granted--I don't know--maybe a quarter, but the average
granted is more like 10 percent, I would guess.

GROSS: And were you criticized by your supervisor at the INS for granting it
to too many people?

Mr. BROWN: Oh, yes. That was a constant battle in that particular office.
And it wasn't so much the supervisor--it depended on which one you had. They
always rotated, and some supervisors at the New York office were, you know,
easier to please than others. But the director and the associate director
were constantly on me for granting too many people.

GROSS: You quit the Immigration and Naturalization Service shortly after the
shooting for the documentary was done. Why did you quit?

Mr. BROWN: I quit because I got tired of fighting the management about my
decisions. I got tired of--half of the energy I spent in my job was arguing
with management about whether I could grant somebody or not. And it just
became clear to me that, you know, as long as I stayed, I would have to fight.
And after a while, you start becoming tempted to just go with the flow, you
know? Heck, if they want a referral, just refer them. Life would be so much
simpler. And when you feel that coming on, it's time to get out. And so--I
would go back to the asylum court, not in the New York office with the
management they've got, but I would go back. But I needed a break from that
office, so that's why I quit.

GROSS: I'm wondering if your experience working as an asylum officer changed
your thinking about who should qualify for asylum and what that process ought
to be.

Mr. BROWN: I don't really think that it did change my opinion. Before I was
an asylum officer, I worked in the refugee advocacy community for, you know,
15 years. And I have to say that after, the asylum thing didn't change my
attitude. I understand that there have to be laws that, you know, dictate who
is granted asylum. I may not agree with all the laws, but I believe that
after the law is passed that, you know, it should be implemented fairly and
evenly and seriously. And I believed that then; I believe that now. I don't
know what further to say. I think that the best you could hope for is that,
you know, the laws that Congress sees fit to pass are fairly applied to
everybody.

GROSS: You have worked with refugees for over 15 years, and I know that it
seems that your heart is really with helping refugees come to--you know, stay
in America and adjust to America. And I'm wondering if you could talk with us
at all about your thinking of how many refugees we can really accommodate. Do
you know what I mean?

Mr. BROWN: Yes, ma'am.

GROSS: Like, whether we should have completely open doors in the best of all
possible worlds, or whether that's just an impossibility and that's why you
have to have standards and you have to have limits.

Mr. BROWN: Yeah. I'm probably not going to give you--the answer that I have
isn't an answer at all. It's a complicated response. I don't think--I'm not
necessarily for bringing refugees to the United States. I think that refugees
should be helped, and I think that it depends on the situation of how you help
them. That's the refugees. On immigrants, generally I think that as long as
the United States is rich and free and other places aren't and the population
of the world keeps growing then people will come to the United States. I
don't care what you do. And so I think that the answer is helping the rest of
the world, the standard of living come up to the United States. If you're not
willing to do that, then you might as well, you know, quit fighting because
that is the only way that's gonna stop immigration. So all of the talk about,
you know, what are the right numbers and all this stuff really don't get to
the point. The point is that if you want to cut immigration, you've got to
help folks have a decent living where they are.

GROSS: Now you were working in Macedonia during the bombing of Kosovo. You
were helping ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo in preparation for asylum
interviews to determine their eligibility to resettle in the US. Now there's
a situation where, like, there's a whole population of people who are being
persecuted. How do you determine who's more worthy than the next person in a
situation where it truly is a whole population?

Mr. BROWN: Well, that is--the US government, the State Department sets
criteria for populations like that. I mean, it's their legal, you know,
responsibility to do it. And they usually do it based on family reunification
factors and on dire need. So they will set the criteria. They'll say, you
know, special medical cases for kids and people who have spouses living in the
US, for example. And then once they've set that, then you interview
accordingly.

GROSS: What was it like for you to interview people in the refugee camps, as
opposed to, you know, in an INS office in New York?

Mr. BROWN: It's very different. I mean, the worst situation I've ever been
in is--I was in Croatia in 1992 when Bosnians from the Serb concentration
camps were being released and bused into Croatia.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. BROWN: And that was really pretty damn sad. After that, everything that
I've ever seen, you know, kind of is easy. But it is different than
interviewing in an office in New York City, although you can see some pretty
sad people there as well.

GROSS: My guest is Gerald Brown, a former asylum officer with the INS. More
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Gerald Brown, a former asylum officer with the INS. His
job was to interview refugees and determine whether they qualified for
political asylum in the US. He's featured in the new documentary
"Well-Founded Fear."

You know, in the documentary "Well-Founded Fear," about people seeking asylum
and the asylum officers who make the decisions about asylum, you really look
like--excuse me for saying this--you look like the prototype of a WASP, you
know, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. You're there with your bow tie, a
certain kind of glasses. It looks like the dictionary definition of the
stereotype of the WASP.

Mr. BROWN: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: So I couldn't help looking at you, wondering--it looks like--this is
probably a totally false impression, but it looks like your ancestors probably
came over on the Mayflower.

Mr. BROWN: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: So what's your personal connection to immigration? Do you have one?

Mr. BROWN: Well, I come from a long, proud line of poor white trash in North
Carolina, so I, you know, can identify with the refugees from that
perspective. I saw injustice in rural North Carolina with black folks, and
you don't have to be, you know, real smart to pick up that that was pretty
unfair. But I guess I was in Egypt in 1976 for a couple of years working with
poor folks there and that's where I was--I guess, my direction was set. You
just really figure out--or I did, anyway--that the world is an unfair place
and that, you know, it's just by the luck of the draw that I was born a white
male in the United States. So it kind of went from there.

Also, Jesse James is an old relative of mine, and I'm a little bit Cherokee,
so I'm not so WASPy as I look, maybe.

GROSS: Did you kind of cultivate the image that I was describing?

Mr. BROWN: The bow tie thing I did, because--you know, when I found out that
I was gonna have to wear a tie every day, I decided, you know, I might as well
be spiffy about it. The rest of it, I don't think I did, not consciously
anyway.

GROSS: I'm wondering what your thoughts have been about the Elian Gonzalez
story, and here's specifically what I'm wondering: There are so many people
who have gotten so caught up in this story of one boy and his family.

Mr. BROWN: Right.

GROSS: And a lot of people who really, you know, want to make sure that he
gets to stay here.

Mr. BROWN: Right.

GROSS: And I suspect that a lot of those people are people who are otherwise
really kind of opposed to open immigration policies.

Mr. BROWN: Right. Yep. Yeah. I have had a hard time, you know, paying much
attention to that case. I was in Guantanamo in 1994 when the Haitian refugees
were being held there, and then Cubans were held there as well, and the
difference in the way that the two populations were treated was pretty
striking. Also, you know, the Cuban-American lobby is one of the strongest in
the United States and you know that they're going to support their cause with
energy and enthusiasm. So, again, I get back to: let's apply the law the
same everywhere. And, you know, I mean, the law is very clear. They should
have sent the kid back. And that's it.

GROSS: You've worked with Haitian refugees.

Mr. BROWN: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: And I'm wondering your thoughts when you read about the recent
shipwrecks of Haitians who were trying to get to America by boat.

Mr. BROWN: Right. Well, I'm saddened. I have a special place in my heart
for Haitians. But there have to be, you know, laws. And the law says if
you're--well, you can't blame the people for, you know, trying to get out of
there. Have you ever been to Haiti?

GROSS: I have not.

Mr. BROWN: Yeah. It's a hell of a place. Anybody in their right mind would
probably try to leave, especially if you had a relative, you know, in a better
place, which most of these folks do. On the other hand, there's no easy
answer of what to do except what I said before. I mean, I think that, you
know, we need to get in there and help the folks make Haiti a livable place,
then they'd quit drowning themselves.

GROSS: You've done a lot of work resettling refugees in the United States.

Mr. BROWN: Yeah.

GROSS: And it must be very difficult finding work that fits the
qualifications they had in their old countries. I mean, for instance, I think
there's a lot of professionals from other countries who come to the United
States without a lot of skills in speaking English who end up having to do
things like drive taxis or be waiters or busboys or janitors, as opposed to
being the kinds of professionals or businesspeople they were able to be in
their own countries.

Mr. BROWN: Yeah. Yeah, that is true that that's an issue. I never, you
know, worried about it too much, quite frankly, because, I mean, if you've got
enough savvy to be a refugee and get yourself out of the messes that they get
out of, you kind of know that they're gonna figure out a way to thrive here
sooner or later. The more difficult case is, you know, the Cambodian peasant
who you're trying to get a job and who can't figure out how to get up the
escalator. That's more of a challenge. I worried about that more than the
other.

GROSS: Now you're living in Utah now. Is there much of an immigrant
community there?

Mr. BROWN: No, ma'am, there's not. We came out here, you know, to get away
from New York for a while and because the place is probably the prettiest
place I've ever seen. But I think that our tenure here is going to end in the
fall and we'll go back to a city. There are no immigrants here. I'm doing
refugee consultation, but it's via, you know, telephones and fax machines and
e-mail.

GROSS: What countries would you most not like to live in?

Mr. BROWN: Oh, Jesus, there are a whole host that I wouldn't go near.
Algeria is one of them, the one that I sent the lady back to. God. But some
of the sub-Saharan African countries. I wouldn't want to be a black person in
Mauritania. That may be my number-one place.

GROSS: Gerald Brown, thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. BROWN: It was a pleasure.

GROSS: Gerald Brown is featured in the new documentary about political asylum
"Well-Founded Fear." It will be broadcast on PBS June 5th. I'm Terry Gross.
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