Asylum seekers

While I am on the topic of refugees and life in the United States, a topic that I may never stop talking about, I will bring up the issue of seeking asylum in the United States. As I have written before, a person can come to the United States and request to remain in the United States out of fear of persecution or worse in their home country. According to an article in today's New York Times, often these people are at the mercy of the immigration judge, with some judges far more lenient than others.

Granted, often these judges only have the information given to them by the claimant, with little objective evidence to back up their information. The national average for approving an asylum application is around 40%, with some courts, such as those in Atlanta, far lower, while others are far higher. The decisions also depend largely on the country the person is fleeing, which makes sense - however, the study cited by the New York Times found that different nationalities had different success rates in each court. For example, Haitians would receive a different outcome depending on if they were in Miami or New York. There were also disparities between sexes and backgrounds. This raises questions of due process and fairness under the law, but how do you fix this system when the inherent nature of asylum is judged on a case-by-case basis?

The end of the article comes with a lovely plot twist that I won't give away - let me just say that it leaves one thinking about how political scandals in Washington can have a far-reaching impact on people's lives.

Refugees may finally start arriving from Iraq!

Finally, there is some good news about the Iraqi refugees, though it is hardly a huge cause for celebration: the US has finally set some guidelines for how the refugees will be processed! This means that while the government agreed to let 7,000 refugees in, none of them have started to arrive yet. This MSNBC article does note that SWEDEN will be taking in more refugees than the United States, and those that come here will undergo a more careful scrutiny than any other group. While I am joyful that there are finally some steps being taken with the Iraqis, I am dismayed that this is taking so long when there are so many in danger because of the help they provided to the United States.

The sad state of Iraqi refugees

I found yet another example of the hardships that the Iraqis are facing right now. Yesterday I wrote about the process that a refugee goes through in order to come to the United States. Today, I am going to post a slightly over dramatic (but still telling) article from the New York Times about how Iraqis are having to turn to the sex trade to get by now that their livelihoods have been torn apart. Like I said above, the piece is a little bit dramatic, but I think it shows how desperate some have become.

Though this isn't the greatest piece of investigative journalism (I don't think it is much of a surprise to find out that women have to turn to prostitution in times of war) I do applaud the attempts by journalists to keep this issue in the news everyday.

Iraqi refugees

In the past several months, reporters have been trying to push the topic of Iraqi refugees into the public eye. Unfortunately, this diligent reporting has not yielded results. Though the United States plans to admit 7,000 Iraqi refugees in the near future, none of these refugees have arrived yet. Since September, the US has admitted only 69 Iraqis into the United States, and it is not clear to me if these people arrived as refugees or with immigrant visas.

There are several different ways to enter the United States, and none of them are easy. First, there is to come in illegally, and I will let the press hounds continue their braying about the advantages and disadvantages to this process. The next way (barring the rather silly process to legalize illegals) is to enter with an immigrant visa. This can be done in a number of ways, the most common occurring when an employer sponsors a visa for an employee. If someone simply wants to come to the United States, they can go to the US Embassy in their country and apply for a visa. I believe the current wait time on this visa is roughly 10 years, though I could be wrong. As for the employer-sponsored option, there is no guarantee that a visa will be granted, for there are only a limited number of visas. Additionally, visas are rather expensive, meaning that only those who have prepared for the process or are well-off are really able to come to this country (hence the number of illegal immigrants).

There are other ways to enter the United States if you fear persecution or death. One is to come to the United States and claim asylum. After you petition for asylum, you have to go before a judge and plead your case. Again, you have to convince the judge that you really really need to stay in the US or else life will not be pleasant. The other way is to be admitted to the United States through the US refugee program. Currently, the quota is 53,000 refugees per year, and usually we do not fill that number. This quota is separate from the immigration quota, and these people are granted a slightly different status than regular visa holders. After they arrive in the United States, they are legal to work and on track to receive their green card. In order to come to the United States as a refugee, the UN must recommend you for resettlement, either as a group (as is the case for the 1972 Burundians or in the case of the Burmese Karen) because you cannot live in your home country because of war, famine, whatever. There are only a few nations that take refugees, such as the US, Australia, Scandinavian countries, Britain...I am sure you are starting to see where these people are going. The refugees are given a loan to fly to the new country, and then begin their integration process. These people will not return to their home countries - they are going to become citizens of the United States, will pay taxes, all that jazz. In other words, their home are such a mess they can never return, and they have to start a whole new life in another country. And as I am sure you have figured out, most of the refugees are not white, but are being resettled in white, Christian countries.

Once the refugees arrive in the United States, resettlement agencies help them adjust to life here. After that, they are on their way to becoming citizens!

Now, refugee resettlement is a highly political thing. The United States has set a standard for who it will accept as a refugee. The first two priorities involve specific ethnic groups that are of special interest to the United States, or people who will have problems in their home country because of political views or personal status. Obviously, the United States is not going to admit people because they are communists and are persecuted - they are looking to advocate a certain agenda in their selection of refugees. Which brings me to the Iraqis: the United States may be reluctant to bring a lot of refugees from Iraq, because in so doing that would admit that Iraq is such a mess that these people can never have a normal life there, now or in the future. However, current estimates put the number of Iraqi refugees at between 2 million - 3.7 million. This number does not include the internally displaced persons, nor does it include the Iraqis that fled to Iran after the First Gulf War, as far as I understand. The UN claims that this is the second largest humanitarian crisis in the world after the Sudan, yet I don't see a bunch of college hippies wearing "Save Iraq" t-shirts.

In order to alleviate this crisis, the United States must fund more refugee assistance abroad, pressure its allies to admit more refugees, and admit more refugees to the United States. We created this problem in many ways, and it is clear that Iraq is going to be a dangerous place to live for a long time.