Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/645

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Cite as: 502 U. S. 478 (1992)

487

Stevens, J., dissenting

firmatively chooses not to join any faction, that choice is a political one. A rule that one must identify with one of two dominant warring political factions in order to possess a political opinion, when many persons may, in fact, be opposed to the views and policies of both, would frustrate one of the basic objectives of the Refugee Act of 1980—to provide protection to all victims of persecution regardless of ideology. Moreover, construing ‘political opinion’ in so short-sighted and grudging a manner could result in limiting the benefits under the ameliorative provisions of our immigration laws to those who join one political extreme or another; moderates who choose to sit out a battle would not qualify.” Id., at 1286 (emphasis in original; footnote omitted). The narrow, grudging construction of the concept of “political opinion” that the Court adopts today is inconsistent with the basic approach to this statute that the Court endorsed in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, supra. In that case, relying heavily on the fact that an alien’s status as a “refugee” merely makes him eligible for a discretionary grant of asylum—as contrasted with the entitlement to a withholding of deportation authorized by § 243(h) of the Act—the Court held that the alien’s burden of proving a well-founded fear of persecution did not require proof that persecution was more likely than not to occur. We explained: “Our analysis of the plain language of the Act, its symmetry with the United Nations Protocol, and its legislative history, lead inexorably to the conclusion that to show a ‘well-founded fear of persecution,’ an alien need not prove that it is more likely than not that he or she will be persecuted in his or her home country. We find these ordinary canons of statutory construction compelling, even without regard to the longstanding principle of construing any lingering ambiguities in deportation statutes in favor of the alien. See INS v. Errico, 385