At about the same time I was looking for a date for my high school sophomore formal, soldiers from the Guatemalan army came to the home of 15-year-old "Enrique" to forcibly recruit him into service. Refusing to shoot innocent villagers, he quickly deserted.
When both soldiers and opposition guerillas came after him, burning his home, he fled north to the United States. Enrique is a political asylum applicant whose case I researched this winter at the Amnesty International Refugee Office in San Francisco. I will vividly remember his case and those of two other asylum applicants for whom I did research because each was only twenty years old, like me.
Another of my cases was a Chinese student who had participated in the 1989 riots in Tiennenman Square. He was arrested and sentenced to five years in a labor camp. After managing to escape, he used a false passport to flee to the United States. I also worked with a young Iranian woman who was persecuted for her refusal to wear the veil. First hot oil was thrown upon her, then she was raped. All three of these cases have been denied asylum by Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) judges and are making a final appeal against deportation and likely further persecution at home.
The issue of asylum involves both rights and responsibilities. The United States has a right to control its borders and regulate immigration as it sees fit. But persons also have the right to seek asylum here.
The United States has the responsibility under international law: 1) to give asylum seekers fair hearings, and 2) not to return people to a country where they have a well-founded fear of political persecution.
The U.S. does have legislation and regulations which guarantee certain levels of protection from return to a dangerous situation in another country. But, because INS often decides cases arbitrarily and refugees have little access to lawyers to help them prepare for their hearings, many refugees are denied asylum even when there is strong evidence of persecution against them. INS has its own immigration judges and special immigration courts which lack the safeguards state and federal courts guarantee to U.S. citizens. Because of prejudice against America's foreign-born population, many judges actually pride themselves on never having granted an asylum petition. Applications are often rejected on ridiculous grounds, because of typing errors or poor translation.
This was an especially challenging and disturbing time to work on asylum policy because of immigration legislation just passed by the House (H.R. 2202) and under consideration in the Senate. The legislation seems to reflect our current insecure political climate. H.R. 2202 originally contained restrictive asylum provisions calling for a 30 day time limit to file asylum applications and the immediate return with only a cursory review of refugees arriving in the United States without proper travel documents. As if a political prisoner could easily obtain travel documents from the government responsible for her torture!
If these proposals should pass, their effects will be devastating. Refugees arriving in the United States are typically tired and scared, do not speak English and are unfamiliar with our laws. A person who has witnessed or experienced torture, imprisonment or threats at the hands of his or her own government may be afraid to confide in U.S. officials.
The proposed legislation does not recognize these difficulties. A short time limit will inevitably result in returning some refugees to their persecutors. Immediate deportation proceedings would deny asylum seekers access to a full and fair procedure to decide whether they need protection.
If implemented, the current legislation would have a particular impact on women asylum seekers. Women who have been sexually assaulted by authority figures in their country of origin may have a hard time talking to U.S. officials, particularly if the officials are men. One of my most compelling cases was that of "Ms. O," a woman who failed to get asylum under the current system even despite her compelling story of beatings and sexual assault resulting from her political activism. So great was the fear and trauma created by her experiences that the woman and her children were afraid to leave their home in the U.S. for months. There is no way she could have communicated her case effectively upon her arrival in the United States. Though she was granted asylum upon appeal and reconsideration of her application, the proposed legislation would eliminate this right to appeal and review for other women.
When talking with people about the issue of asylum, I've noted a frequent question: Why does everyone seek asylum in the United States? We seem to have a crazy notion that all the world's displaced are flocking here. But of the more than 20 million refugees in the world, only about 140,000 apply to the Immigration and Naturalization service for asylum each year. Only a fraction of those, perhaps 15,000, will actually be granted. If the U.S. were, however, to pass more restrictive asylum policies, we would send a message to other countries to do likewise, and international agreements on the protection of asylum seekers would become meaningless.
Interestingly enough, spending a winter studying U.S. asylum policy did not leave me with bitter feelings toward the U.S. The truth is just the opposite. Researching case after case of political persecution has made me very grateful to live in a country with a sense of fairness for its citizens unmatched by any other. Sometimes after studying cases like those I've mentioned I would be moved to tears by an asylum seeker's story; at the same time I would marvel at my own good fortune to have been born in this country. I only regret that we fail to extend our principles of fairness to non-U.S. citizens who reach our borders.
