Asylum Denied

Describes one political refugee's long and difficult struggle through immigration processing, detailing his imprisonment in Kenya, his escape to the U.S., and the ordeal of dealing with a bureaucracy that sought to deport him.

Contents.

In recent decades, asylum has emerged as a highly politicized European issue. The term ’asylum seeker’ has suffered a negative perception and has been associated with notions of illegality and criminality in mainstream media. These misconceptions have been supported by politicians as a distraction from economic and political uncertainties with the result that asylum seekers have been deprived of significant rights. This book examines the effect of recent attempts of harmonization on the identification and protection of refugees. It considers the extent of obligations on the state to admit and protect refugees and examines the 1951 Refugee Convention. The motivations of European legislators and legislation concerning asylum procedures and reception conditions are also analysed. Proposals and initiatives for refugee movements and determinations are examined and assessed. The author makes suggestions for better protection of refugees while responding to the security concerns of States, and questions whether European law and policy is doing enough to uphold the fundamental right to seek and enjoy asylum as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This book takes a bold look at a controversial issue and generates discussion for those involved in the fields of human rights, migrational and transnational studies, law and society and international law.

Using both in-depth accounts by asylum applicants and interviews with lawyers and others involved, this book takes the reader on a journey through the process of applying for asylum in both the United States and Great Britain.

This book addresses the intersection of various domains of international law (refugee law, human rights law including child rights international law and humanitarian law) in terms of the implications for State obligations to child refugee asylum seekers in particular; both as collectives and as individual persons. How these State obligations have been interpreted and translated into practice in different jurisdictions is explored through selected problematic significant cases. Further, various threats to refugee children realizing their asylum rights, including refoulement of these children through State extraterritorial and pushback migration control strategies, are highlighted through selected case law. The argument is made that child refugee asylum seekers must not be considered, in theory or in practice, beyond the protection of the law if the international rule of law grounded on respect for human dignity and human rights is in fact to prevail.

This is the first book-length inquiry into Newfoundland immigration prior to Confederation in 1949. Sanctuary Denied sheds new light on the preservation of Newfoundland's culturally "distinct" homogeneous society and its endemic difficulties. Refuting a widespread assumption that pre-Confederation Newfoundland was unable to attract immigrants, Dr. Bassler identifies numerous requests involving thousands of potential immigrants eager to move to Newfoundland in the half century prior to Confederation. Despite the existence of a uniquely liberal refugee law from 1906 to 1949, Newfoundland immigration policy developed a tradition of refusing asylum to all refugees and of deporting and excluding non-British immigrants as undesirable. The analysis of this immigration record raises intriguing questions about the legacy of nation-building in Newfoundland.

Through the Refugee Act of 1980, the United States offers the prospect of safety to people who flee to America to escape rape, torture, and even death in their native countries. In order to be granted asylum, however, an applicant must prove to an asylum officer or immigration judge that she has a well-founded fear of persecution in her homeland. The chance of winning asylum should have little if anything to do with the personality of the official to whom a case is randomly assigned, but in a ground-breaking and shocking study, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Andrew I. Schoenholtz, and Philip G. Schrag learned that life-or-death asylum decisions are too frequently influenced by random factors relating to the decision makers. In many cases, the most important moment in an asylum case is the instant in which a clerk randomly assigns the application to an adjudicator. The system, in its current state, is like a game of chance. Refugee Roulette is the first analysis of decisions at all four levels of the asylum adjudication process: the Department of Homeland Security, the immigration courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the United States Courts of Appeals. The data reveal tremendous disparities in asylum approval rates, even when different adjudicators in the same office each considered large numbers of applications from nationals of the same country. After providing a thorough empirical analysis, the authors make recommendations for future reform. Original essays by eight scholars and policy makers then discuss the authors’ research and recommendations Contributors: Bruce Einhorn, Steven Legomsky, Audrey Macklin, M. Margaret McKeown, Allegra McLeod, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Margaret Taylor, and Robert Thomas.