Judge George T. Chew
FY 2014 - 2019, New York Immigration Court
Judge Chew was appointed as an Immigration Judge in September 1995. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from City College of New York in 1972, and a Juris Doctorate from Antioch School of Law in 1979. From 1985 to 1995, Judge Chew was in private practice in New York. From 1981 to 1984, he was a partner with the Law Offices of Wong & Chew, also in New York. Judge Chew served as a trial attorney for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service in New York from 1979 to 1981. He is a member of the New York Bar.
Deciding Asylum Cases
Detailed data on Judge Chew decisions were examined for the period covering fiscal years 2014 through 2019. During this period, Judge Chew is recorded as deciding 943 asylum claims on their merits. Of these, he granted 866, gave no conditional grants, and denied 77. Converted to percentage terms, Chew denied 8.2 percent and granted (including conditional grants) 91.8 percent. Figure 1 provides a comparison of Judge Chew's denial rate fiscal year-by-year over this recent period. (Rates for years with less than 25 decisions are not shown.)
Nationwide Comparisons
Compared to Judge Chew's denial rate of 8.2 percent, nationally during this same period, immigration court judges denied 63.1 percent of asylum claims. In the New York Immigration Court where Judge Chew was based, judges there denied asylum 26.7 percent of the time. See Figure 2.
Judge Chew can also be ranked compared to each of the 456 individual immigration judges serving during this period who rendered at least one hundred decisions in a city's immigration court. If judges were ranked from 1 to 456 - where 1 represented the highest denial percent and 456 represented the lowest - Judge Chew here receives a rank of 450. That is 449 judges denied asylum at higher rates, and 6 denied asylum at the same rate or less often. Ranks are tallied separately for each immigration court. Should a judge serve on more than one court during this period, separate ranks would be assigned in any court that the judge rendered at least 100 asylum decisions in.
Why Do Denial Rates Vary Among Judges?
Denial rates reflect in part the differing composition of cases assigned to different immigration judges. For example, being represented in court and the nationality of the asylum seeker appear to often impact decision outcome. Decisions also appear to reflect in part the personal perspective that the judge brings to the bench.
Representation
If an asylum seeker is not represented by an attorney, almost all (89%) of them are denied asylum. In contrast, a significantly higher proportion of represented asylum seekers are successful. In the case of Judge Chew, 1.3% were not represented by an attorney. See Figure 3. For the nation as a whole, about 19% of asylum seekers are not represented.
Nationality
Asylum seekers are a diverse group. Over one hundred different nationalities had at least one hundred individuals claiming asylum decided during this period. As might be expected, immigration courts located in different parts of the country tend to have proportionately larger shares from some countries than from others. And, given the required legal grounds for a successful asylum claim, asylum seekers from some nations tend to be more successful than others.
For Judge Chew, the largest group of asylum seekers appearing before him came from China. Individuals from this nation made up 69.8 % of his caseload. Other nationalities in descending order of frequency appearing before Judge Chew were: Nepal (4 %), Soviet Union (2.5%), India (2.4%), Albania (1.5%). See Figure 4.
In the nation as a whole during this same period, major nationalities of asylum seekers, in descending order of frequency, were El Salvador (17.3%), China (13.5%), Honduras (13.3%), Guatemala (13.0%), Mexico (12.1%), India (3.8%), Haiti (2.1%), Nepal (1.6%), Cuba (1.2%), Eritrea (1.1%), Cameroon (1.1%), Bangladesh (1.0%), Ecuador (0.9%).
