Vera-Valera

Opinion by Judge SCHROEDER; Dissent by Judge KLEINFELD.

Ernesto Antonio Vera-Valera, his wife, and two of their children, all nationals of Peru, petition for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ refusal to grant .them asylum, 8 U.S.C. § 1158 (a), and withholding of deportation, 8 U.S.C. § 1253 (h). The family members’ applications are all derivative of Ernesto Antonio Vera-Valera’s application, and we will refer to him as “petitioner.”

In Lima in 1987, petitioner and his wife began selling juices and candies on the street for several hours each evening, after he worked his day job with the government. To avoid having to obtain an individual street vendor’s license, he joined a cooperative of street vendors.

In 1987-1988, petitioner first became a board member, then president of the cooperative. During his presidency, the goal of the cooperative was to build a permanent building in which all of its members could sell their wares. This was important, according to petitioner, because the cooperative’s permit to vend on the streets was about to expire, and had already been extended once. Petitioner was a strong advocate of the construction of that building. He stated that…

dissenting:

I respectfully dissent.

We agree that Vera-Valera had a subjective fear of persecution. Our difference of opinion is that I think the feared persecution was on account of Mr. Vera-Yalera’s political opinion, but the majority thinks the opinion it *1305 was on account of should be characterized as “organizational” and “economic” rather than political. The opinion was that the vendors union should operate out of one building as the government preferred, not on the streets as Shining Path preferred.

Were there a dispute in most American towns about whether street vendors should operate in one compound, or on sidewalks around the town, or whether their union should build the compound, it would be merely commercial and organizational. But not everyone sees union organizational disputes as separate from political life. Some think that “the Party of the proletariat” should “wage the struggle against capital” through “trade unions, cooperative societies.... ” Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism (1924), in Albert Fried & Ronald Sanders, Socialist Thought — A Documentary History 499-500 (1964). In Lenin’s view, “a small, compact core of the most reliable, experienced and…