I read this on the wilderness that is social media. Is there any truth to it? If so, where do I point people to, if I want to let them know that we really should be taking in refugees?
I believe it applies only during a time of war.
“Article 33 provides that: No contracting state shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
And not what you were specifically asking about but probably also useful:
The Geneva conventions are a set of treaties that govern warfare- there’s probably some provision about not attacking refugees or something along those lines. But at their core, the “Geneva Conventions” are rules governing warfare between two combatants and don’t apply here.
You’re probably thinking of the “Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees” (1951) and the “Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees” (1967), both of which are multilateral UN treaties that define refugees and how they should be treated. The difference between them is that the Convention was limited to pre-1951 European refugees (i.e. WWII related ones), while the Protocol removes the temporal and geographic restrictions.
I suspect that there’s some legalistic wrangling going on w.r.t. the actual refugee status- it’s defined as:
There’s a lot of legal wiggle room there for saying that the border migrants aren’t refugees, but merely migrants wanting a better life, I’d bet.
As I understand it, that is exactly the issue - whether fear of e.g., criminal violence from street gangs fits the definition of refugee.
There have been rulings from domestic courts in other countries interpreting the meaning of refugee in the treaty, which have concluded that if the authorities in an individual’s country can’t or won’t protect the individual from drug gangs or politically motivated violence, that individual may qualify as a refugee. The failure of the local government to protect its citizens can trigger the rights under the treaty.
Sure, but a local domestic court decision in say… Ireland, isn’t binding on the US, and nor is it necessarily even pertinent.
Not saying those court decisions are binding on US courts. The US courts are obviously not bound by foreign courts.
But, it is significant, if you’re a court interpreting an international treaty, to consider how other domestic or international courts have interpreted that same treaty, because one principle of implementing treaties is that they should have a consistent interpretation.
A US court may find the reasons given by other courts to be helpful in interpreting the treaty obligations. Always subject, of course, to whatever US federal statutes have been adopted to implement the treaty.
This clashes with another principle of implementing treaties: interpreting them as advantageously to your own interests as possible.
Yes, but then the element of “whose own interests” comes into play. The people not wanting to let in the refugees and the courts that would be required to interpret the treaty are not the same people.