The Eroded Institution of Asylum in the United States

It was thirty years ago this year that the United States passed what's known as the Refugee Protection Act, a piece of legislation signed into law under President Jimmy Carter that affirmed the dignity of those seeking refuge from persecution around the globe. The law enmeshed in U.S. policy a commitment to helping victims of persecution, making sure that the U.S. had a fair and impartial system of asylum and resettlement.

Thirty years later, the Refugee Protection Act of 1980 has helped more than half a million people seek asylum from brutal regimes, and has helped more than 2.5 million refugees resettle. Talk about a law that puts human rights front and center.

So what's the problem? Over the past decade, particularly since the advent of a certain law infamously known as the Patriot Act (as well as 2005's Real ID Act), much of the meat of the Refugee Protection Act has been rendered moot, as broad national security laws have turned responsible refugee policy into shambles. The result has meant that tens of thousands of people fighting for democracy under repressive regimes (like, say, Burma), are not allowed to seek asylum in the United States.

Talk about a good law being swept under the bus. That's why groups like Human Rights First are pushing hard to renew the Refugee Protection Act in 2010, to help take care of many of the gaps that were created in U.S. refugee policy post-9/11. They're pushing for the U.S. Senate to pass a bill introduced by Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy and Michigan Senator Carl Levin that will re-establish the United States as a model country when it comes to refugee policy. Help out by urging your Senator to get behind this historic effort.

Perhaps nothing underscores the flaws in current U.S. refugee policy like the stories of refugees who have been caught up in the mess of U.S. national security law since 9/11. Human Rights First has documented a number of these stories. Like the Sri Lankan refugee who was actually listed as a "terrorist" because he paid ransom to be free from his kidnappers. (U.S. authorities viewed the financial transaction as "material" or monetary support of terrorism, even though the man was paying a ransom to save his life.)

They get worse. A Congolese woman who was kidnapped at the age of 12 and forced to serve as a child soldier was refused asylum because the U.S. listed her as a terrorist; a Burundi refugee was detained in county jails for 20 months in the U.S., because authorities saw the fact that he was once robbed of $4.00 by terrorist rebels in his country as monetary support for terrorism; a man from Afghanistan was not granted permanent resident status because as a child he once was forced to carry weapons for the mujahidin group fighting the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

And the list goes on, and on. Human Rights First puts the perfect punctuation mark on the whole situation.

"Refugees seeking asylum now face prolonged detention in prison-like conditions without due process safeguards, such as a custody review by an immigration court, denials of their requests for asylum based on an arbitrary filing deadline, and overly broad exclusion provisions, including those that define victims of terrorism as terrorists," they write.

Do we really want a refugee policy that allows victims of terrorism to be treated like terrorists?  That hardly seems like the type of policy that would bring good karma. And it hardly seems like the type of policy that is consistent with the 1980 version of the Refugee Protection Act.

All the more reason to get behind Sen. Leahy's and Sen. Levin's call to renew the Act in 2010. Lend your name here to help reshape U.S. refugee law.

Photo credit: jackol