OAKES, Circuit Judge:

This case presents the question whether aliens who are stowaways seeking political asylum are entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge after their applications for asylum have been denied by an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) District Director. After holding that the INS District Directors had not abused their discretion in denying Yiu Sing Chun and Jee-Chiu Shan, two young men from the People's Republic of China, asylum status under the Refugee Act of 1980, 8 U.S.C. §§ 1158(a), 1101(a)(42)(A), the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Joseph M. McLaughlin, Judge, 550 F.Supp. 90, held that they were not entitled to an exclusion hearing because they were stowaways and, as such, denied procedural rights by 8 U.S.C. § 1323(d). We reverse the second holding and remand to the agency for a hearing at which Chun and Shan will be entitled to renew their request for asylum.

BACKGROUND

The facts may be briefly stated. Yiu Sing Chun and Jee-Chiu Shan illegally left the People's Republic of China by swimming from Canton to Hong Kong and then stowed away on the "American Lark" bound for Oakland, California, and New York. When they were discovered after the vessel was underway, or as they state, when they presented themselves to the crew, they identified themselves as refugees seeking political asylum. The Captain placed them in detention and notified INS. When the ship arrived in California, each filed a Form I-589 applying for asylum. A Chinese-speaking employee of the shipping line, who neither was a lawyer nor spoke English well, helped Chun and Shan complete the forms. Chun's form indicated that he would face a jail sentence because of his illegal departure and that he had been "persecuted" at school after speaking out "against the working class condition during political class discussion, and compare [sic] them with the Western Free world"; it also noted that his father was a businessman, a social class "generally oppressed and sneered upon." Shan's I-589 claimed he could not tolerate the Communist society, and that having spoken out against the Communist system he had been sent "to the farms for hard labor"; and that since his grandparents were property owners, "we belong to a social class that is generally oppressed and sneered upon." The INS San Francisco District Director, in accordance with the asylum application regulations, referred the applications to the Asylum Division, Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Department of State (BHRHA), which took the view that the applicants "had not established a well-founded fear of persecution within the meaning of the United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees." The BHRHA gave the following reason for its conclusion:

The applicant has not been persecuted in the past in the People's Republic of China (PRC). PRC officials have adopted a rather permissive attitude toward emigration, legal and illegal. The typical penalty imposed for violations of Article 176, Section 6 of Chinese Criminal Law (illegal departure) is fifteen days detention. The maximum penalty, in serious cases, is one year which, in the unlikely event it were imposed, would constitute prosecution and not persecution.

The District Director denied the requests for asylum. His written decision of July 20, 1982, noted no allegations in the application form of prior persecution of the men or their families, and no credible testimony of a well-founded fear of persecution in the interviews by an immigration officer. He concluded that neither Chun nor Shan qualified as a "refugee" under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A), note 2 supra, and found them statutorily ineligible for asylum. Further, because they did not apply for refugee status at the office of the American Consulate General in Hong Kong, he found them unworthy of a favorable exercise of the Attorney General's discretion.

While their applications were considered the petitioners were confined on the "American Lark," en route to New York by way of Panama and Savannah, Georgia, where Chun and Shan were served with the San Francisco District Director's decision. Two days after the New York arrival, with the assistance of counsel, both Chun and Shan filed new applications for asylum and supporting documents which are perhaps inconsistent in two or three particulars with the first application, but which elaborate extensively their reasons for leaving the People's Republic and what they fear would happen to them if they returned. Petitioners were taken off the "American Lark" and placed in the Immigration Detention Facility in Brooklyn. INS forwarded the updated applications to the BHRHA for a second advisory opinion, but did not conduct a second interview. The State Department recommendation merely reiterated the recommendation made to the INS District Director in San Francisco. We note that the petitioners, contrary to applicable regulations, apparently had no opportunity to rebut at a hearing the points made by the BHRHA. The District Director in New York, adopting the State Department's recommendation, denied the second applications for asylum without elaboration and ordered the petitioners excluded. Upon receipt of notice of the New York District Director's decision, Chun and Shan filed habeas corpus petitions challenging INS procedures in the adjudication of their asylum applications, as well as the INS denial of temporary parole status.

After Judge McLaughlin upheld the INS Director's discretionary denial of asylum and parole, Chun and Shan brought a contempt motion to require the INS to provide an exclusion hearing at which the men could renew their applications for asylum before a Special Inquiry Officer, to whom we shall refer as an immigration judge. 8 C.F.R. § 1.1(1). Judge McLaughlin concluded that the jurisdiction of the immigration judge was statutorily circumscribed by 8 U.S.C. § 1323(d)'s explicit denial of exclusion hearings to stowaways, and that the hearing requirement of the asylum regulations did not apply to stowaways. We granted a stay of removal and repatriation to the People's Republic of China pending our decision in the appeal from both of Judge McLaughlin's orders.

DISCUSSION

The Refugee Act of 1980, Pub.L. No. 96-212, 94 Stat. 102 (1980), was a response to the urgent needs of those subject to persecution in their homelands. Id. § 101(a). We have characterized the Act as "the end product of an evolutionary process in the law of asylum." Stevic v. Sava, 678 F.2d 401, 404 (2d Cir. 1982), cert. granted, ___ U.S. ___, 103 S.Ct. 1249, 75 L.Ed.2d 479 (U.S. 1983). In Stevic we traced the origins of the Refugee Act in pre-1968 asylum law, id. at 404-05, the United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, id. at 405-06, and asylum law from 1968 to 1980, id. at 406-07, and the Refugee Act of 1980 itself, id. at 407-08. So far as is pertinent we will assume familiarity with the Stevic opinion. Of concern to us here is Congress's direction to the Attorney General to establish "a new uniform asylum procedure" that would be consistent with treaty obligations. H.Conf.Rep. No. 781, 96th Cong., 2d Sess. 20 (1980), reprinted in 1980 U.S.Code Cong. Ad.News. 160, 161. Thus, the Act required the Attorney General to "establish a procedure for an alien physically present in the United States or at a land border or port of entry, irrespective of such alien's status, to apply for asylum." See supra note 1. The question before us is whether, under the statute and the Attorney General's regulations delineating "a procedure ... to apply for asylum," the petitioners, arriving at a port of entry as stowaways, are entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge on the issue whether they are refugees within the meaning of the Act, and therefore entitled to asylum.

The asylum procedure adopted by the Attorney General pursuant to the directive of the Refugee Act of 1980 is set forth in 8 C.F.R. Part 208. There are five steps in the asylum procedure: preparation and filing of the application for asylum, examination in person by an immigration officer or judge, an advisory opinion from BHRHA, a written decision of the District Director, which may not be appealed, and renewal of the denied asylum request before an immigration judge in exclusion or deportation proceedings. With just the foregoing in mind it would be plain that because the refugee asylum procedure applies, in the words of the statute, "irrespective of such alien's status," and because the regulations promulgated by the Attorney General under the Act do not differentiate a stowaway from any other "applicant for admission," petitioners are to be "placed under exclusion proceedings" where they may renew their requests for asylum before an immigration judge.

But the Government argues that, unlike other excludable aliens under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a), stowaways are not entitled to procedures provided other excludable aliens. The Government cites 8 U.S.C. § 1323(d), which provides in part that "the provisions of section 1225 . . . for detention of aliens for examination before special inquiry officers and the right of appeal provided for in section 1226 . . . shall not apply to aliens who arrive as stowaways." The effect of § 1323(d), the Government says, is not only to make a District Director's order of exclusion against a stowaway final, but also to make a District Director's denial of asylum to a stowaway final, as held under pre-1980 Act law. See, e.g., Kordic v. Esperdy, 386 F.2d 232 (2d Cir. 1967), cert. denied, 392 U.S. 935, 88 S.Ct. 2301, 20 L.Ed.2d 1393 (1968). Although the INS concedes that the Refugee Act of 1980 requires the Director to establish uniform procedures for asylum applications "irrespective of [an] alien's status," 8 U.S.C. § 1158(a), it argues that the Act requires only that the actual application form and the procedure associated with a District Director's determination need be uniform. And although the INS regulations themselves do not distinguish between stowaways and other aliens in providing that an exclusion proceeding follows denial of an asylum request, 8 C.F.R. 208.8(f)(3), and that an asylum request may be renewed before an immigration judge in that proceeding, 8 C.F.R. 208.9, INS asks us to read into these regulations a qualifier: aliens whose asylum applications are denied may reassert their asylum claim in an exclusion hearing only if they are entitled to such a hearing under other provisions of the Act.

We are thus required to answer the Government's argument that, although a plain reading of the asylum application procedures grants Chun and Shan a hearing before an immigration judge, another statute removes that right because they are alien stowaways. The Government emphasizes and we are well aware of the presumption that a new, general statute does not generally effect an implicit repeal of an earlier, specific statute. United States v. United Continental Tuna Corp., 425 U.S. 164, 169, 96 S.Ct. 1319, 1323, 47 L.Ed.2d 653 (1976). Rather, our duty is to give harmonious operation and effect to all statutory provisions if possible, absent some explicit indication of legislative intent derived from either the words of the statute or its legislative history. See, e.g., Watt v. Alaska, 451 U.S. 259, 267, 101 S.Ct. 1673, 1677, 68 L.Ed.2d 80 (1981); Morton v. Mancari, 417 U.S. 535, 549-51, 94 S.Ct. 2474, 2482-83, 41 L.Ed.2d 290 (1974). We disagree with the Government's contention that § 1323(d) mandates that stowaways seeking asylum are entitled only to a District Director's determination on the asylum issue. We believe that the Refugee Act of 1980 and § 1323(d) can be harmonized by reading the refugee regulations — particularly 8 C.F.R. 208.9(f)(3) — to require a hearing before an immigration judge limited to the asylum issue for stowaways seeking admission as refugees. We think that this result is not inconsistent with § 1323(d), and that it best accommodates congressional intent that the "Attorney General ... establish a uniform procedure for passing upon an asylum application" under the Refugee Act. S.Rep. No. 256, 96th Cong., 2d Sess. 16, reprinted in 1980 U.S.Code Cong. Ad.News 141, 156.

Despite the fact that Chun and Shan are stowaways, their procedural rights as asylum applicants derive from the Refugee Act of 1980. Section 1323(d) is a specific provision detailing the treatment afforded alien stowaways. This provision must be read in light of § 1182 which defines "general classes" of "[e]xcludable aliens." Although § 1182(a)(18) lists "[a]liens who are stowaways" as an excludable class, § 1182(a) contains a proviso stating that its definitions are applicable "[e]xcept as otherwise provided in this chapter." The Refugee Act limits the effect of § 1323(d) by "otherwise provid[ing]" that aliens applying for asylum may do so "irrespective of ... status." 8 U.S.C. § 1158(a). Whatever procedural limitations § 1323(d) might impose in the absence of § 1158, we hold that these limitations are not applicable in the asylum context to the extent and only to the extent that an asylum determination is involved.

As we have noted above, INS regulations promulgated under the Refugee Act do not distinguish between stowaways and other aliens in providing for an exclusion hearing after the District Director has denied an asylum application, 8 C.F.R. 208.9, 208(f)(3), nor, read as a whole, does the agency's asylum procedure make any distinction among applicants for asylum. Nor do internal INS procedures ("Operations Instructions") qualify in any way the generalization that an "alien shall be informed of his/her right to renew the asylum request . . . in subsequent exclusion or deportation proceedings." INS O.I. 208.14, reprinted in 4 C. Gordon H. Rosenfeld, Immigration Law and Procedure 23-156.20 (rev. ed. 1982). Indeed, in explaining the need for statutory and regulatory changes to prevent use of the "asylum process, with its attendant delays, as a convenient method to prolong an excludable or deportable alien's stay in the United States," an Acting Commissioner of the INS stated that "[p]resent law and regulations permit a claim of asylum to be raised before a Service district director, and again before an immigration judge in the context of a deportation or exclusion hearing." We think it fair to infer what the regulations now require from the proposed changes. The Acting Commissioner's own example of the Mariel Boatlift refugees — many of whom were certainly stowaways — indicates that stowaways, like all other aliens, enjoy full procedural rights in applying for asylum.

This agency guidance on the issue of aliens' procedural rights seems to support our interpretation of the regulations. An agency's interpretation of its own regulations, and the statute under which they are promulgated, is of course entitled to substantial deference. See, e.g., Ford Motor Credit Co. v. Milhollin, 444 U.S. 555, 565, 100 S.Ct. 790, 796, 63 L.Ed.2d 22 (1980). The INS makes a policy argument against our interpretation, however, that we do not lightly cast aside. Specifically, the INS maintains that because the regulations establish a procedure for applying for a refugee visa at a United States embassy in a foreign country, 8 C.F.R. Part 207, and applicants who are denied such visas are entitled to no further hearing, see Van Shih Hsieh v. Kiley, 569 F.2d 1179, 1181 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 828, 99 S.Ct. 102, 58 L.Ed.2d 121 (1978), stowaways who bypass our embassy should not be afforded any different or greater procedural protection. To do so, it is said, would encourage people to stow away rather than to follow established procedures.

Whether the intricacies of American immigration law would be known or have any effect on a prospective refugee is speculative. In any event, Congress itself distinguished aliens present in the United States or "at a land border or port of entry" and other refugees. 8 U.S.C. §§ 1158(a), 1157(c). The policy argument urged by INS highlights a bit of a logical anomaly, but we view it as simply another example of different patterns woven into the same legislative tapestry. In short, we are distracted by it, but not convinced.

We conclude that the Refugee Act of 1980's asylum procedures and § 1323(d) can be reconciled by allowing stowaways a hearing limited to the asylum claim, followed by whatever other procedural rights other asylum applicants are afforded. Because the hearing we require will be limited solely to the issue of asylum eligibility, we preserve the basic thrust of § 1323(d)'s command that stowaways are not entitled to exclusion hearings. As stowaways, the petitioners are entitled to nothing more; as asylum seekers at our border, they are entitled to nothing less. The name the proceeding goes by is immaterial. The Government, of course, argues that the approach we take here works a repeal of § 1323(d). We think that our holding enables § 1323(d) to be read in harmony with the Refugee Act, thus maintaining "strict observance of our international obligations concerning those who genuinely flee persecution in their homeland." Exec. Order No. 12324, 3 C.F.R. 180, 182 (1982).

Nothing that we have said, of course, goes to the substantive question whether petitioners are in fact entitled to be treated as asylees. Resolution of this question requires the development of a factual record, for Congress, in accordance with treaty law, has instructed the INS to deny asylum in certain circumstances, including a determination that an alien applicant is not a refugee within the meaning of the Act. And of course the Attorney General shall not deport or return alien refugees, as a matter of statutory law, 8 U.S.C. § 1253(h)(1), as well as of treaty law, United Nations Protocol, supra, art. 33(1). Congress's limitation on the Attorney General's discretion requires careful fact-finding. Were the substantive question before us, the issue on appeal would be whether there was substantial evidence on the record as a whole to support the INS decision, McMullen v. INS, 658 F.2d 1312, 1316 (9th Cir. 1981); see also Stevic v. Sava, 678 F.2d at 404, and whether the INS decision was based on the requirements of statute and treaty.

Finally, our construction of the statute and the regulations is aided to some extent, if not guided, by what we perceive to be the dictates of procedural due process. We say this full well knowing that the alien seeking initial admission is requesting a privilege and has very limited rights regarding his application. Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U.S. 787, 792, 97 S.Ct. 1473, 1477, 52 L.Ed.2d 50 (1977). But a refugee who has a "wellfounded fear of persecution" in his homeland has a protectable interest recognized by both treaty and statute, and his interest in not being returned may well enjoy some due process protection not available to an alien claiming only admission. Because the severity of harm to the erroneously excluded asylee outweighs the administrative burden of providing an asylum hearing, if the regulations did not do so already the INS arguably would be required to provide a hearing before an immigration judge to determine whether applicants for asylum are, in fact, refugees within the meaning of the Act.

Reversed and remanded for further administrative proceedings.