## Facts

- The respondent, a native and citizen of China, entered the United States in 1993 without valid entry documents and was placed in removal proceedings.
- He was married with three children, all of whom (with his wife) remained in China during the proceedings.
- After the birth of the couple’s second child, Chinese family-planning authorities imposed a substantial fine and required the wife to have an IUD inserted.
- The couple secretly had the IUD removed to have another child; their third child was born in December 1985.
- In March 1986, officials forcibly took the wife for sterilization (tubal ligation) and imposed another substantial fine.
- The family experienced collateral sanctions, including barriers to household registration and education access for the third child, requiring payment of high tuition; other penalties included school disruptions for older children and loss of farmland used for livelihood.
- The respondent remained in China for about seven years after the sterilization, eventually paying fines and securing employment before departing for the United States.
- The Immigration Judge found the respondent credible and found past persecution based on the wife’s forced sterilization and related sanctions, but denied asylum and related relief on the ground that later stability and lack of further incidents showed a fundamental change in circumstances.

## Issues

1. Whether forced sterilization of the respondent’s spouse under a coercive family-planning policy, along with related penalties, constitutes past persecution of the respondent on account of a protected ground.
2. Whether the absence of future risk of forced sterilization or abortion—because the spouse was already sterilized—constitutes a “fundamental change in circumstances” sufficient to rebut the presumption of a well-founded fear after past persecution under 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(1)(i)(A).
3. Whether asylum may be granted based on the severity and permanence of past persecution even if future persecution is unlikely.

## Decision

- The Board of Immigration Appeals, sitting en banc, sustained the appeal, reversed the denial of asylum, and granted asylum.
- The Board agreed that the respondent established past persecution based on the spouse’s forced sterilization under China’s coercive family-planning policy, together with associated sanctions.
- The Board held that the sterilization’s effect of eliminating future risk of forced sterilization or abortion does not qualify as a “fundamental change in circumstances” rebutting the regulatory presumption of a well-founded fear.
- The Board concluded that the gravity and permanence of forced sterilization supported asylum, including as a grant based on severe past persecution.

## Legal Principles

- Forced abortion or sterilization, or punishment for resistance to coercive population-control programs, constitutes persecution on account of political opinion within the statutory refugee definition (8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)).
- The forced sterilization of an applicant’s spouse may be treated as persecution of the applicant because it permanently impairs the couple’s ability to procreate.
- Once past persecution is established, a presumption of a well-founded fear of future persecution arises; the government may rebut it only by showing, among other grounds, a “fundamental change in circumstances” (8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(1)).
- The persecutory act of forced sterilization, and its resulting elimination of future sterilization risk, cannot itself be treated as a “fundamental change in circumstances” that defeats the asylum claim.
- Asylum may be granted based on severe past persecution alone where the harm is especially serious and permanent, even if future persecution is not likely.

## Conclusion

The Board held that spousal forced sterilization and related penalties establish past persecution and that the sterilization’s elimination of future sterilization risk cannot be used to rebut the presumption of a well-founded fear as a “fundamental change in circumstances”; given the severe and irreversible nature of the harm, the respondent was granted asylum.


Matter of Y-T-L-, 23 I. & N. Dec. 601 (B.I.A. 2003)