Chavarria

MEMORANDUM

Cesar Augusto Pajuelo Chavarria, his •wife, Elila Aponte de Pajuelo, and their daughter, natives and citizens of Peru, petition for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ order dismissing their appeal from an immigration judge’s decision denying their application for asylum and withholding of removal. We have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252 . We review for substantial evidence, INS v. Elias-Zacarias, 502 U.S. 478 , 481 n. 1, 112 S.Ct. 812 , 117 L.Ed.2d 38 (1992), and we deny the petition for review.

Substantial evidence supports the agency’s conclusion that petitioners failed to establish past persecution or an objectively reasonable fear of future persecution on account of a protected ground, because they did not demonstrate that the persons who attempted to force Chavarria to divulge accounting information were motivated by more than a personal dispute. See Molina-Morales v. INS, 237 F.3d 1048, 1052 (9th Cir.2001) (personal retribution is not persecution on account of a protected ground). Accordingly, petitioners’ asylum claim fails.

Because Chavarria failed to establish asylum eligibility, it necessarily follows that he did not satisfy the more stringent…