Metropolitan News-Enterprise
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Page 1

Court Rejects Asylum Claim Based on ‘Friendship’ With Gypsies
By STEVEN M. ELLIS, Staff Writer

A panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected the asylum bid of a Bulgarian man who claimed he would face persecution for his friendship with the Roma people if returned.

Ruling 2-1 Friday that Petar Donchev failed to demonstrate that members of Bulgaria’s ethnic majority who are friendly to the Roma hold an identifiable, common immutable characteristic they cannot or should not be required to change, the court concluded Donchev was not part of a “particular social groupâ€