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known to oppose the political asylum system.  The program

did not include the opinion of anybody who works with polit-

ical asylum applicants to get the opposite perspective.

Not only did the tone mislead, but the story outright

misrepresented facts.  For example, the story claimed that

of the 100,000 asylum applications filed each year only

"1, 2 percent" of those people were legitimately fleeing

persecution.18  Reality was quite different.  Immigration

courts approved 19 percent of asylum applications in 1992,

the year before the report was aired and the same year the

INS approved 35 percent of affirmative applications.19

Moreover, many of those who do not receive asylum may actu-

ally be fleeing persecution but either do not meet the

threshold imposed by U.S. law or do not possess adequate

legal counsel to convince the INS or an immigration judge of

the merits of their claims.

Though inaccurate and misleading, the 60 Minutes report

has framed the asylum debate in Congress and the administra-

tion.  Soon after the report was first aired, lawmakers

examined the asylum process and declared that the system

needed to be changed.  That diagnosis occurred in the con-

text of broader immigration reform legislation, which was

motivated by strong concern in many parts of the country

about the influx of undocumented immigrants into the United

States--a concern that immigrants were changing the culture

for the worse and taking jobs away from native-born Ameri-

cans.

Debate ensued and often grew heated.  The charge was

made that the asylum system was out of control.  Detractors

of the system argued that asylum is a growth industry and

that many asylum seekers were using the system as a shortcut

to permanent residency.  Detractors used the stories of the

World Trade Center bombers to illustrate that asylum seekers

generally cannot be trusted and are not worthy of protec-

tion; they also asserted that other refugees are economic

migrants, rather than victims of human rights abuses, and

therefore do not qualify for protection.  Responding to such

issues, lawmakers began to craft legislation to fix the

perceived problems with the asylum process that 60 Minutes

had highlighted.

But before the legislation could make its way through

Congress, the INS itself responded to the concerns and in

January 1995 overhauled its asylum procedures.  New regula-