Asylum Seekers
Recent Activity
In its newest five-year "roadmap" for justice and home affairs policy, the European Union has made migration a priority area. But while the Stockholm program offers plenty of detail on issues like illegal migration and asylum, it offers few specifics as to the final goal. MPI's Elizabeth Collett analyzes the program's action points and looks at challenges facing its implementation.
In the United States, asylum on the basis of sexual orientation was first granted in 1994. Swetha Sridharan of the Council on Foreign Relations explains why U.S. immigration law focuses on sexual identity rather than sexual conduct, and what this distinction has meant for asylum seekers.
Counterterrorism policies have had an unintended, negative effect on asylum and refugee resettlement in the United States. Swetha Sridharan of the Council on Foreign Relations explains the origins of the material-support bar, which groups it has affected, and how the U.S. government is addressing the problem.
Approximately 50,000 of Germany's 170,000 tolerated asylum seekers are expected to will qualify for a residency permit under a law passed in March 2007. MPI's Eric Leise reports.
Not long after the United States passed the 1980 Refugee Act, thousands of people began fleeing civil war in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Their treatment in the United States, linked to U.S. foreign policy, spurred the Sanctuary Movement and efforts to grant them refugee status, as Susan Gzesh of the University of Chicago explains.
Over the past four years, the United States has resettled far fewer refugees than it did in the 1990s. The decline has stemmed partly from post-9/11 security measures. But this book explains other, deeper reasons, deriving from changes in how and why refugees move, how asylum states receive them, and the world community's response. It also suggests steps to restore the program and better address real refugee needs.
MPI Director Kathleen Newland provides an overview of the latest asylum numbers and insights as to why they are declining.