NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS DEC 31 2020 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT JIANRUI LIN, No. 19-73150 Petitioner, Agency No. A088-457-571 v. MEMORANDUM* JEFFREY A. ROSEN, Acting Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted December 9, 2020 San Francisco, California Before: BOGGS,** M. SMITH, and BENNETT, Circuit Judges. Jianrui Lin, a native and citizen of the People’s Republic of China, petitions for review of the order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) that denied his application for asylum and withholding of removal. We have jurisdiction pursuant * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Danny J. Boggs, United States Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, sitting by designation. to 8 U.S.C. § 1252. We deny the petition.1 The BIA agreed with and incorporated specific findings of the Immigration Judge (IJ) and added its own reasoning, so we review both decisions as to those findings. Bhattarai v. Lynch, 835 F.3d 1037, 1042 (9th Cir. 2016). We review factual findings, including adverse credibility determinations, for substantial evidence. Shrestha v. Holder, 590 F.3d 1034, 1039 (9th Cir. 2010). The BIA affirmed the IJ’s adverse credibility determination based on two inconsistencies between Lin’s testimony and the Floating Population Booklet (“booklet”) he submitted. The first is a date inconsistency: Lin testified that his wife was sterilized on October 10, 1995, but the booklet indicates his wife was sterilized in November 1995. Lin’s explanation is that he was testifying as to the date in the Chinese Lunar Calendar, while the booklet uses the Western Gregorian Calendar. The second inconsistency is a fee inconsistency: Lin testified that he and his wife received two fines totaling 9,000 RMB following the births of their two children, but the booklet indicates a total of 13,000 RMB was levied as a social compensation fee. Lin’s explanation is that his wife paid an additional 4,000 RMB for the issuance of the booklet, which was subsumed into the social compensation fee. We have found that “[m]ajor inconsistencies on issues material to the alien’s claim of persecution constitute substantial evidence supporting an adverse 1 Lin’s motion for a stay of removal is denied as moot. 2 credibility determination.” Rizk v. Holder, 629 F.3d 1083, 1088 (9th Cir. 2011). But “trivial inconsistencies that under the total circumstances have no bearing on a petitioner’s veracity should not form the basis of an adverse credibility determination.” Shrestha, 590 F.3d at 1044. Here, the date inconsistency is trivial. The BIA determined that October 10, 1995 in the Lunar calendar is December 1, 1995 in the Gregorian calendar (which does not fall within November 1995, as the booklet shows). So the BIA rejected the “validity” of Lin’s explanation and upheld the IJ’s finding that the date discrepancy supported an adverse credibility finding. The BIA ...
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