Seventh Circuit opinion in forced-abortion asylum case

The Seventh Circuit has ruled in an immigration case involving a woman seeking asylum to avoid China's practice of forced sterilizations and abortions.

Unfortunately, in what has to be one of the most offensive, snide, and injudicious judicial opinions I have ever read, Judge Evans felt compelled to complain that the Court's ruling (in the woman's favor) would "open the floodgates" to those who "take issue with" China's practices and "do[] not want to submit to [China's] population control policy" (Imagine! The nerve of these people! "Not want[ing] to submit"!):

The majority opinion is beautifully written and quite persuasive. Yet, despite the fact that it concludes by saying we are "not holding here that every woman of childbearing age in China will automatically be entitled to asylum in this country, because they are all potentially subject to the coercive family planning policies," I think, as a practical matter, we are either doing, or coming close to doing, just that. How is Lin's case going to be different from that of any other Chinese woman who takes issue with China's policy and arrives here saying she does not want to submit to its population control policy?

No doubt, Lin's story (if true) is quite compelling. Who would want the state to force a woman to have an abortion? On the other hand, China has a huge population problem, and there are people who applaud efforts to fix it. But when Congress, in 1996, amended the law to add forced abortion as a ground for granting refugee status, it made a value judgment about China's population control policy. That is interesting because it looks a bit like the congressional antiabortion faction outmaneuvered its anti-immigration faction-- which itself is ironic, given that most members of Congress who belong to one o f the factions belong to the other as well. Given the present state of law, it seems that every Chinese woman of childbearing age who says, to quote the words of the statute, that she is in a state of "resistance to a coercive population control program," can only be denied asylum in America if her story is incredible. As a practical matter, that's pretty hard to establish. So, given the present state of the law, the floodgates are probably open. . . .

This is amazing. "On the other hand"? "[T]here are people who applaud efforts to fix [China's 'huge population problem']"? How morally obtuse can this "judge" be? Yes, Congress did "make a value judgment about China's population control policy." How could it not?

Rick