I-589

CURRENT I-589 (OFFICIAL)

I-589 SPANISH (Not Official Form)

I-589 RUSSIAN (Not Official Form)

Resources for Completing the I-589 Application for Asylum and Withholding of Removal

• Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project

• Innovation Law Lab 

Overall Advice: The Art and Science of the I-589

The I-589 is the application form for asylum. It requires friends to:

• report the details of their places of residences, employment, education and family whereabouts, which requires friends to consult their records and gather information

• answer specific questions about their asylum request, which requires you to summarize the friend's asylum request and circumstances

In addition to the do's and don'ts described in the resources above, you may also discover some conflicting advice when consulting various lawyers about how to proceed. It's helpful to remember that completing these forms is as much an art as it is a science.

The "Art" of the 589, Example #1 - Timing: 

• Some lawyers will suggest completing the I-589 first. Working on the affidavit will take time, and it is only the 589 that is necessary to file in most cases.

• Time allowing, some will suggest completing the I-589 after having worked on the affidavit because you can effectively summarize the request for asylum when your friend has processed their entire story .  Otherwise  you may need to change the I-589 significantly after learning new information from the more comprehensive work involved in completing the affidavit. 

What do you do? If the friend's filing deadline (one year after their entry to the US) is approaching, getting the I-589 submitted is the most important first step in the process; you can always complete the affidavit later.  However, your friend might be more likely to attract a pro bono lawyer if you've already completed a I-589 and an affidavit such that the issues of the case are very clear and a lot of the paperwork has been done already. Therefore, there may be no harm -- and potentially lots of help -- in working on the affidavit first. If you wish to multitask, you can also have the friend complete the first few pages of the I-589 by themselves after hours, while you work together on the affidavit.

The "Art" of the 589, Example #2 - Details:

• Some lawyers will advocate for specificity when completing the I-589, encouraging friends to include names, dates and details of the harm endured, to their answers in order to provide immediate legitimacy and urgency to their case.

• Others will advocate for generality, encouraging friends to be vague in their statements and to eliminate any opportunity for a judge later to identify discrepancies between written statements -- thereby questioning the friend's credibility and providing grounds for denying asylum.

What do you do? Ultimately, our friends need to understand the pros and cons of their choice, and recognize that they will be held accountable for all of the details they include. If a friend is anxious about their story or meeting with authorities, generality may be a better choice. If a friend feels confident, it can be useful to be specific in the areas about which they are very certain.