NIJC’s Asylum Project.

Greetings from Jing!

It’s now our third day volunteering at the National Immigration Justice Center and I think the seven of us all thoroughly enjoy spending the week in Chicago and working on our various projects.

The NIJC has various programs under the umbrella of immigration law and we get to get our feet wet in these areas.

(For more details, see http://www.immigrantjustice.org/programs/programs/programs.html)

Immigration law practice is a complicated field that intersects with criminal law, family law, employment law, public policy, and human rights. It really is fascinating, and you directly work with people and can really impact their lives.

I have been assigned to work with NIJC’s Asylum Project.

It is difficult to imagine a class of people more deserving of humanitarian assistance than genuine refugees. Refugees are utterly dependent on the good will of foreign governments. At the end of 2007, there were 16 million refugees in the world.

First things first, what is the difference between an asylum-seeker and a refugee?

An asylum seeker is someone hoping to be given permission to stay in another country having fled persecution in their native country.

A refugee is someone who has been given that permission, and therefore may live in the country that has granted them asylum.

What is the difference between an immigrant and a refugee?

Immigrants are willing migrants who leave their country of origin. Refugees are forcibly displaced.

Legal Test For Asylum/Refugee Protection

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) sets forth the legal test for asylum eligibility. A person may qualify for asylum if he or she meets the international definition of a refugee. A refugee is defined as:

Any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.


INA section 101 (a)(42)(A); 8 U.S.C. section 1101(a)(42)(a). Accordingly, individuals who can demonstrate that they have suffered past persecution or have a “well-founded fear of persecution” based on one of the five enumerated grounds can qualify for asylum protection.


What does that all mean?

Since 1975, the U.S. has resettled approximately 2.6 million refugees.
In order to be designated a refugee, people must have a well-founded fear of persecution in their country of origin because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Refugees legally enter the United States in search of freedom, peace, and opportunity for themselves and their families.

According to a report to Congress, in 2008, the U.S. admitted 60,191 refugees from 51 countries. Over half were originally from either the countries of Burma or Iraq. (http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/129393.pdf)

Can you imagine being uprooted from the home and life you are used to, and forced to leave because of what you are, what you look like, and/or what you believe? Safety and security is such a basic human necessity, that it is difficult to imagine not having it.

Refugee and asylum law is complicated and emotional. It is discretionary, so even if someone may be entitled to protection, an asylum officer makes the ultimate decision based on an interview whether the individual will be granted asylum.

To tackle this problem of international displacement and persecution requires the consideration of many factors, but I am at the moment happy to just be able to take small steps and work on some individual cases and to operate the Asylum Hotline that the NIJC runs on Wednesdays from 9 am to 12 pm.

Thanks to all the people who helped make this service trip to Chicago possible!

OXOX

J