John Smith has just arrived in New York from China. He is seeking asylum on his well-founded fear that the Chinese government is persecuting him because he is a member of the Uighur ethnic minority which practices Islam and opposes the Communist Party of China.

John says the Chinese government wants to send him to a prison where he is forbiddento practice Islam and is to be stripped of his ethnic identity.

The Chinese government has a different story. They say John was enrolled at a boarding school to help him learn a trade. The Chinese government says the United States should understand this system well as it was copied directly from an American program called the "Carlisle Indian Industrial School."

They say John is wanted for murder because he bombed a school and that he was also caught wearing a foreign wristwatch set toXinjiang time instead of Beijing time.

John's friends in the U.S. have discovered that no one who attends the school he supposedly bombed knows anything about it and all the students are alive.

Complicating things, John and other Uighurs have fought with the Taliban against the U.S. in Afghanistan, but John's American friends say John was only fighting with the side he thought was right and because he was not a U.S. citizen, he could fight with any army against the U.S. legally.

What steps will John have to take to apply for asylum? What administrative process will be used? Will he be successful? Why? What arguments would you make on John's behalf? How about against him?