How to prepare your asylum statement

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First, if you are applying for asylum without the assistance of an attorney or legal services organization, please seriously consider getting help with this process.  The asylum process is fairly complicated, and there is the risk that if your case is ultimately denied, you will end up in removal (deportation) proceedings.  Also, legal services organizations and attorneys have access to and knowledge of resources that can help you to strengthen your application, like expert witnesses, credible country condition reports, and other materials that will assist in preparing the best possible case.   Nevertheless, if you are preparing your affidavit on your own, here are some tips I hope will help you. 

• Organize your thoughts before you start writing.  Maybe you remember writing term papers in school, and preparing an outline before you began so you would be sure to cover all the points you wanted to make; your asylum statement is similar.  Make a list of things you want to be sure to include.  If your case depends on a series of events that happened over time, a timeline can be a helpful way to organize your thoughts. 
• Once you have your outline in place, spend some time thinking about the details. This can be difficult, so be sure to give yourself plenty of time, and a comfortable space in which to write.  You may want to have a close friend or family member there with you, to talk things over with, or you may prefer to write alone--either way, being comfortable in your space will help you to stay focused on the task at hand.  
• When you start writing, focus on telling the story, start to finish.  If there are things that you don't remember--names or dates, for instance, that you want to look up--just make a note to go back and check the facts rather than stopping writing to do the research.  You want to get the first draft out in one piece, and go back to edit it later.  
• You might want to take a break at this point.  Writing this type of statement can bring up a lot of emotions, and so it's helpful to get some distance from your writing before you go back to editing.
• Once you reread the statement in its rough form, you'll see that there will be places where information is missing or not clear.  You can spot some of these places yourself, so take the time to fill in the blanks, and answer any of the questions you left for yourself when you were writing the draft.  
• For the next step, I encourage you to find someone who is unfamiliar with your country or your story.  Although the asylum officer who eventually reviews your case will be familiar with the country conditions in your home country, it is still important to provide enough context that someone who is unfamiliar with the specific details can follow what happened to you.  If there is a community center or an ESL class near you, check to see whether there is someone who would be willing to help you with the statement--not to provide content, but to read the statement for clarity and coherence, and to let you know if there are parts that are not clear.  Since the statement is about something that happened to you, the details will be very clear to you, but to an outside observer, things that make perfect sense in your mind may be confusing.  Ask the person to point out areas where more explanation is needed, or where it is not clear what the sequence of events was; these are two of the most common problems in asylum statements.  
• Once you have some suggestions about things to add or revise, go back to the statement to see how you can work these details into the statement.  You'll almost certainly notice other areas that can be improved once you know what to look for, so be sure to spend some time fine-tuning the statement to include as much detail as you can remember.  
• The key things to include are: 
• Any specific names you can recall:  people, places, or organizations.
• Any specific dates you can recall, or at least a general idea of the timing of events (this took place in the spring, the next event took place in the fall)
• Any sense memories you can recall: a particular sound, or smell, or feeling you had.  You want to make the experience real for the reader, and the best way to do that is to be as descriptive in your language as possible.  
• Enough background about yourself that the things that happen in the story make sense.  If you were at a political rally, for instance, why were you there?  Were your parents politically active?  Is it something you got into while you were at university?  Were you brought by a friend?  
• Answers to the following questions: 
• What happened to you? 
• Who did it to you?  
• Why did it happen to you, as opposed to someone else? (why were you singled out?)
• What do you fear would happen to you if you were sent back? 
• Why do you believe that what you fear would happen would really happen? (in other words, have you received direct threats, have you heard things in the news, or do you just have a general sense of dread?)
• Why couldn't the government protect you from what you are afraid would happen? 
• Your statement will generally be several pages long; don't shy away from including detail that you may feel is unnecessary.  The details of your story are what will give it life and make it real for the reader, so do not be afraid to include things that may not seem important.  
• And, of course, always tell the truth.  There is no need to embellish what happened to you, and doing so can only hurt you.  

Good luck to you, and, as always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at christina@cruddenlegal.com.  And thanks to all of the people who call or write to tell me that they're reading this blog--it's encouraging to know that someone finds this effort helpful!