As Congress deliberates a new comprehensive immigration-reform bill, lawmakers are considering legislative proposals that would make it harder—in some cases impossible—for legal immigrants, and even U.S. citizens, to sponsor their relatives for legal residency.

This study analyzes databases of decisions from all four levels of the asylum adjudication
process [...] The analysis reveals amazing disparities in grant rates, even when different
adjudicators in the same office each considered large numbers of applications from
nationals of the same country.