Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/647

 502us2$29I 01-22-99 08:39:25 PAGES OPINPGT

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

489

Stevens, J., dissenting

II It follows as night follows day that the guerrillas’ implied threat to “take” him or to “kill” him if he did not change his position constituted threatened persecution “on account of ” that political opinion. As the Court of Appeals explained in Bolanos-Hernandez: “It does not matter to the persecutors what the individual’s motivation is. The guerrillas in El Salvador do not inquire into the reasoning process of those who insist on remaining neutral and refuse to join their cause. They are concerned only with an act that constitutes an overt manifestation of a political opinion. Persecution because of that overt manifestation is persecution because of a political opinion.” 767 F. 2d, at 1287.6 It is important to emphasize that the statute does not require that an applicant for asylum prove exactly why his persecutors would act against him; it only requires him to show that he has a “well-founded fear of persecution on account of .. . political opinion.” As we recognized in INS v. CardozaFonseca, the applicant meets this burden if he shows that there is a “ ‘reasonable possibility’ ” that he will be perse6 The Government has argued that respondent’s statement is analogous to that of a person who leaves a country to avoid being drafted into military service. The INS has long recognized, however, that the normal enforcement of Selective Service laws is not “persecution” within the meaning of the statute even if the draftee’s motive is political. Thus, while holding that an Afghan soldier who refused to fight under Soviet command qualified as a political refugee, Matter of Salim, 18 I. & N. Dec. 311 (BIA 1982), the INS has adhered “to the long-accepted position that it is not persecution for a country to require military service of its citizens.” Matter of A–G–, 19 I. & N. Dec. 502, 506 (BIA 1987); cf. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status ¶ 167 (1979) (“Fear of prosecution and punishment for desertion or draft-evasion does not in itself constitute wellfounded fear of persecution under the [1967 United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees]”).