Michael Levitis

Good day everybody. This is Mike Levitis with immigration attorney, Yakov Spektor. We have one more question to ask Yakov regarding political asylum. Right now, it’s very relevant with what’s happening in the news. In Ukraine, Russia, and other countries, people trying to obtain political asylum in America, it’s not so easy. There are a lot of requirements. So can you briefly explain to us, what are the components? What are the factors in obtaining a political asylum in USA?

Yakov Spektor

Michael, actually this question potentially, could save people a lot of money, and might actually mean the difference between them getting asylum here or not. The reason for that is that a lot of people we think, well, in the country of I am from, I was persecuted, and everybody defines persecution different. People don’t know the law, they think, my boss was mean to me, my classmates were mean to me, my mother was mean to me, you know, why don’t they try for asylum in the United States? And then they that’s exactly what they do, they would go ahead, they would submit to submit a list of grievances to the government, and then they would get denied.

Michael Levitis

And you only get one chance, right, when you apply.

Yakov Spektor

Strangely enough, you get two chances. If the asylum office will not give you asylum, your case will go to the immigration judge.

Michael Levitis

And you don’t want to blow those chances, you want to start off on the right foot.

Yakov Spektor

And if the immigration judge will not give you asylum, he will probably order you deported. So important to get it right. I’ll just give you a bit of statistic here, 90% of the applicants who tried to do this by themselves get denied. If they do this with an immigration attorney such as myself, then it’s about a 50/50 chance, asylums are never 100%. If you think that this is something that might be a shoe in, you’re probably wrong. It probably makes sense to speak to someone like me, a good immigration lawyer. Because what happens in a lot of these cases, is those people might have a legitimate claim. But it has to be presented in the right way.

Michael Levitis

They have to give evidence, right?

Yakov Spektor

It’s good to present evidence, but it’s not really a requirement. If you’re running away from from a crowd with machetes, you’re not going to turn back to them and say, hey, give me give me some sort of documentation. If having said that, evidence helps. And that’s exactly something that we try to do. Okay, if, during the initial consultation, I determined that you know what, at least you have a running chance of getting it, then we could see how we could increase your chances of getting it. And this is exactly the job of an immigration lawyer to increase your chances of getting assigned.

Mike Levitis

I assume your chances increase if you actually show harassment from the government from what you’re running away, that you may be at risk of arrest, detainment or something like that, correct?

Yakov Spektor

Absolutely. For example, if you’re from North Korea, even without me knowing your full story, I could probably guess that the government is after you. But one one of the things that we have to show even if the government is not after you, let’s say some private individuals are after you. But then we have to show that you cannot seek help from the government.

Michael Levitis

I didn’t think about it. Okay, very good. You know what, I appreciate that you have the passion, I feel the passion that you have to try to help these people that’s very important that you actually believe in what you’re doing as an attorney for these clients. Thank you for your time.