Immigration law

Rulings often uphold court

Although Alito is the son of Italian immigrants, his record in immigration cases is similar to his perspective in criminal cases. He has demonstrated an inclination to defer to the judgment of the immigration courts, which are under the Justice Department’s umbrella. As a result, a non-citizen fighting deportation is paddling upstream with Alito.

Legal scholars and some Alito supporters have pointed to his decision in the case of Parastoo Fatin, a young Iranian woman who was fighting deportation in the early 1990s, as evidence of his scholarship and his impact on immigration law.

Alito ruled in Fatin’s case that gender-based persecution could be grounds for asylum. But the ruling was a hollow victory for her. She lost her case when Alito found that she had not shown enough factual evidence to

prove that she would be persecuted were sent back to Iran.

It was typical Alito — an impeccably crafted decision that denied relief to an individual.

Alito has sided with non-citizens in seven of his 24 published rulings involving matters such as bids for asylum. And when Alito has sided with an immigrant, it has often been on narrow grounds. Two instances involved Chinese women who produced evidence that they had been targets of China’s forced abortion policy established grounds for asylum that are especially congenial to social conservatives.

In a third case, Alito found that Annagret Goetze, a German national, should not be deported because she qualified as a religious worker for a Pennsylvania non-profit committed to ‘‘Christianizing the ordinary aspects of life for the mentally handicapped.’’

‘‘In cases where people are requesting asylum based on politics or a particular social group, he’s very strict,’’ said David Leopold, an Ohio immigration lawyer who has examined Alito’s record for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. ‘‘Is someone fleeing forced abortion more deserving of protection than someone fleeing political persecution?’’