Asylum Claim No Longer an Issue After Robbery Conviction
Prior to May 1998

In a decision dated August 21, 1996, the Board of Immigration Appeals ("BIA") dismissed an appeal by an applicant seeking asylum and withholding of deportation in the case of In re L-S-J, Int. Dec. 3322 (BIA 1997), upholding the exclusion and deportation order issued by the Immigration Judge in the case because of the applicant's conviction for robbery with a deadly weapon.

The applicant, a citizen of Haiti, was convicted of robbery with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to serve 2 1/2 years in prison in 1995. Under the revised definition of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA") the appeal had to be dismissed since it was a crime of violence which required that the punishment for the crime exceed at least one year. Therefore, the applicant can no longer apply for or be granted asylum because of his conviction for an aggravated felony.

The Board declined to consider the applicant's constitutional argument that it would be a violation of the Fifth and Eighth Amendments under the U.S. constitution to exclude him without considering his asylum application, noting that the Board lacks the authority to declare its governing statute unconstitutional.