Matter of Y-T-L-

Y-T-L was a Chinese citizen whose wife was forced to undergo involuntary sterilization after the birth of the couple’s third child, a son, pursuant to the Chinese government’s coercive program for population control. After the births of Y-T-L’s second and third children, the government imposed fines, suspended their two daughters from school for a semester, and confiscated the land on which the family farmed to earn a living. Y-T-L-’s son was only permitted to attend school with high tuition. After Y-T-L-’s wife was sterilized in 1983, he decided to leave China. However, Y-T-L- did not leave China for another seven years. By the time Y-T-L- left in 1993, he had paid all the fines, secured employment, and was able to pay his son’s tuition. At the time of Y-T-L-’s deportation hearing, his wife and children had remained in China with no further issues for 15 years. Y-T-L- expressed concerns relating to the tuition payments for his son’s attendance at high school and college. An immigration judge (IJ) denied Y-T-L-’s applications for asylum and withholding of removal, noting that he had remained in China for seven years and his family for 15 years after his wife’s sterilization with no further persecution. The IJ determined that although Y-T-L- had experienced past persecution, the passage of that much time with no additional incidents of persecution had brought a fundamental change in conditions such that Y-T-L- did not continue to have a well-founded fear of future persecution if deported to China. Y-T-L- appealed.