By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//November 26, 2012//
United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit
Civil
Immigration — asylum
Where hostility in Pakistan towards an asylum applicant was primarily based on extramarital relationship, asylum was properly denied.
“Substantial evidence supports the conclusion that political opinion did not centrally motivate the MQM’s persecution of the Shaikhs. The Board concluded that the MQM directed, at most, only some hostility at the them because of Hafsa’s earlier ‘minimal support’ of the party. Therefore, the immigration judge and the Board concluded that political opinion, at best, was only an incidental or superficial motivation for the MQM’s persecution of the Shaikhs: over a decade passed after Hafsa stopped supporting the party in 1991 before serious incidents of violence occurred in 2002. This violence, the immigration judge and Board concluded, sprung directly out of Afroz’s discovery of the affair between Hafsa and Asim. Furthermore, the MQM ‘repeatedly and explicitly, demanded that [Asim] leave [Hafsa] and return to his ex-wife, who the MQM referred to as their “Mohajir sister.”’ Although MQM members did refer to Hafsa as a traitor to the party and urged her to return to the fold, the repeated references to her marriage to Asim combined with the absence of serious violence before Afroz’s discovery of the Shaikhs’ relationship support the Board’s finding that political animosity had only a minor role in motivating the MQM. After all, Afroz never mentioned political opinion in her threatening phone calls to Hafsa. Therefore, the Board’s conclusion that political opinion was not central to the Shaikhs’ persecution is supported by substantial evidence.”
Petition Denied.
Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals, Flaum, J.