In the United States, those who have fled their countries and are unwilling to return due to some form of violence, persecution, or abuse may seek three remedies: (1) asylum, (2) withholding of removal, and (3) protection under the Convention Against Torture. Although asylum is the most well-known of these remedies, withholding of removal has a far more robust history and plays an important role as a fallback for those who are statutorily barred from asylum (usually due to asylum’s strict one-year application deadline or its substantial carve outs for criminal activity).

On their surface, asylum and withholding are incredibly similar: both require a showing of danger to the applicant and for such abuse or violence to be motivated — at least in part — by the applicant’s race, nationality, religion, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group (PSG). However, the two differ in their approach to mixed-motive cases, in which the applicant faces targeted harm partly due to their PSG affiliation and partly for reasons unrelated to that affiliation (for example, if they are the victims of generalized crime). The 2005 REAL ID Act clarified this “nexus” requirement for asylum by stating that the applicant’s PSG affiliation must be “one central reason” for their persecution, but did not revise the language of withholding, which merely requires PSG affiliation to be “a reason.”

This ambiguity has given rise to a circuit split, with the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Eleventh Circuits extending the “one central reason” standard to withholding and the Sixth and Ninth Circuits maintaining that PSG must simply be “a reason” for a threat to the applicant’s life or liberty. Although the difference between “one central” reason and “a reason” may appear insubstantial, it carries significant practical and legal consequences. This Note argues that the standard adopted by the Sixth and Ninth Circuits — that if an applicant’s PSG is “a reason” for the threat to their life or liberty, they should not be removed — is more consistent with domestic and international law, and more just, than the "one central reason" standard.