Immigration Hardship Evaluations and Serious Mental Illness: Tying Function to the Legal Standard

Stephan M. Carlson, MD, MBA, FAPA · Immigration and Trauma

A hardship evaluation is not a request to treat the applicant or to argue the equities. It asks a narrow psychiatric question: if removal proceeds, what measurable mental-health consequence falls on the qualifying relative, and how does serious mental illness change that calculus? Whose hardship the statute is measuring The most common structural error in an immigration psychiatric report is fixing the lens on the wrong person. In non-LPR cancellation of removal, the immigration judge does not weigh the hardship to the noncitizen at all. Under INA §240A(b)(1)(D), relief turns on whether removal would cause "exceptional and extremely unusual hardship" to a qualifying relative—a United States

Most relevant service: Istanbul Protocol & Asylum Evaluations