The Board of Immigration Appeals has held that Immigration Judges should generally deny asylum, as a matter of discretion, to nationals of highly developed democratic countries, typically by pretermitting the application at the master calendar hearing and has extended that approach to withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture. The covered countries include all European Union members, EEA and EFTA states, several European microstates, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea. The Board also established a presumption that EU citizens are ineligible for discretionary asylum, rebuttable only on national security or foreign policy grounds, reasoning that EU citizens may reside indefinitely in any member state and that all member states are parties to the Refugee Convention.
The case involved a French and Gabonese dual national, and the Board held that a dual national must show a well-founded fear in each country of nationality. Because she was never harmed in France, the country designated for removal, she received no presumption of fear, and the Board found her fear not objectively reasonable based on speculation, a cousin's passport confiscation, and the safety of her sisters in France. The Board also rejected the Ninth Circuit's "disfavored group" analysis in Lapadat v. Bondi and found she had not shown she could not meet minimal residency formalities or obtain work, school, or health insurance elsewhere in the EU. The appeal was dismissed.
The full text of Matter of B-S-A-N- can be found here: https://www.justice.gov/eoir/media/1465531/dl?inline