If an applicant qualifies as a refugee, therefore, a court must move on to the second question: Does the refugee warrant a favorable exercise of the Attorney General's discretion? See Hyzoti v. Mukasey , 269 F. App'x 563, 565 (6th Cir. 2008). The Attorney General has issued a regulation that guides the executive branch's decisions about which refugees merit a favorable exercise of discretion.
In fact, this Court has affirmed decisions of other immigration judges who have denied similar asylum applications, gleaning information from United States Department of State reports. See, e.g., Hyzoti v. Mukasey, 269 Fed.Appx. 563, 567 (6th Cir. 2008) (affirming denial of asylum based on changed country conditions where applicant was presumed to have established past persecution); Cutaj v. Gonzales, 206 Fed.Appx. 485, 491 (6th Cir. 2006) (affirming IJ's reliance on 2004 State Department report stating that "there are no indications of systemic political persecution in Albania at the present time"). The record in this case includes the 2004 and 2005 Department of State Human Rights Reports for Albania.