Renee Boje might be construed to be a political exile. I’m not sure of what her status is now, but at least for a time Canada was refusing to extradite her back to the U.S. on marijuana charges. They may still be protecting her.
It seems to me that political refugees are generally fleeing a condition in their own societies which strikes the rest of us as insanity. Those who believe the drug laws are far too harsh are likely to consider them an example of such mass insanity, so by that logic a “drug war refugee” is much the same as a political refugee.
But then others probably think of her in the same way as Roman Polanski, i.e., what he did was so universally reviled that he’s not a political refugee at all, but just a criminal fugitive.
Well, maybe. Castro has made a habit of granting political asylum to essentially any American who can make it to Cuba. Last I heard, there were over 70 federal fugatives currently still residing in Cuba, perhaps the best known being Assata Shakur, who xicanorex mentioned (the linked article is a very sympathetic interview of her from June 11, 2002). No American fugitive in Cuba has ever been turned over to US authorities, although some (like Eldridge Cleaver himself) have supposedly been asked to leave the country if the Cuban authorities no longer wanted to deal with them. I believe the Cuban government considers its sheltering of these people to be political asylum. Whether it is truly analogious to political asylum in the U.S. or Western Europe is debatable.
In Cleaver’s case, I’m not sure if he was ever formally granted asylum in Cuba or Algeria, but his stay in those countries was with the support and aid of the local governments. He was facing prison back in the U.S., as he fled the country in '68 after being sentanced to return to prison for parole violations. After becoming disillusioned with the government of Algeria in the early 70s, he illegally entered France and lived underground for sometime in Paris. What I’ve read says that he did apply for political asylum in France, and that was denied. However, the French government did eventually grant him resident status. Cleaver volunitarily returned to the U.S. in 1975.
I don’t think that draft dodgers were granted asylum, rather Canada refused to extradite them because draft dodging is not a crime in Canada (because there was no draft.) I believe the same applies to escaped slaves.
I thought of him too.
Actually I believe the problem was that he was gone for so long and there was some issue of statute of limitations so they (the courts in PA) went ahead and tried him in abstentia. I believe he was convicted and found guilty and sentenced to death. France refused to extradite him, or rather allowed him to argue against it because for France trials in abstentia were inhuman (or a better word). So the D.A. worked her butt off to try and get a special law passed so that he would get a second trial and his main arguement against deportation would be moot. That’s the last I heard of the case.
Einhorn claimed to have fled from the U.S. because he wouldn’t get a fair trial, citing his anti-war efforts in the 60s. To my mind, that doesn’t qualify as seeking political asylum, because he never claimed it - he hid for 15 years, and the French didn’t know he was there.
The Pennsylvania authorities gave an assurance he wouldn’t face the death penalty, so France was prepared to extradite him on the murder charge: Hippy ‘killer’ arrives in US.
Oh, and Ranchoth, I thought one of the goals of the Allies was to liberate European countries so that the people of each country could re-establish democracy and set out their own values in their own laws.
I didn’t realise it was to establish a permanent relationship of subordination to the U.S. :rolleyes:
Actually, this is one area where domestic U.S. law corresponds to international law. There are very few situations in which refoulement (expulsion) of someone who has a well-founded fear of persecution is allowed. There’s no way someone could rejected for asylum because of statutory rape.
I’ll have to look up the specifics when I have access to my work stuff tomorrow, but actually, having been convicted of a “crime of violence” does disqualify a person from beng eligible for political asylum in the U.S. The definition of “crime of violence” varies according to jurisdiction; however, statutory rape may well qualify. The Convention against Torture, however, is separate from political asylum; an asylum grant eventually leads to permanent residence and citizenship if one so desires, but if one applies for relief from deportation under the Convention Against Torture, one has no permanent status in the U.S. and INS can return you home if conditions change in your home country such that you are no longer in danger of being persecuted. (I don’t know much about CAT, because it was enacted after I was no longer working in the immigration litigation environment. Now I work with nice, boring work visas; at least, they’re boring until the teenage kid of your client gets arrested on a drug charge.)
Lots and lots of convictions can disqualify a person from asylum eligibility; drug trafficking also falls into this category. In this context, drug trafficking is ANY sale, importation, or transfer of narcotics, no matter how small the quantity and even if no money changes hands. Forgot about the joint stashed in your pocket on the flight home from Mexico? That’s international narcotics trafficking, and you’re SOL, unles you’re “lucky” enough to be Cuban or Vietnamese or from some other place that refuses to take you back; if INS can’t return you home, they can hold you in jail for up to 6 months while they keep trying. The moral of the story: if you weren’t born here, either keep your nose clean, or naturalize first.
I’ve seen cases where Hmong refugees were ordered deported back to Laos because they had friends back home send them personal-use quantities of opium, which is a Hmong folk remedy for treating chronic pain; in this case, the chronic pain was the result of injuries sustained while aiding downed American pilots during the Vietnam War. It wasn’t that the judge didn’t want to cut them some slack; the law simply allows for no discretion whatsoever.
Anyway, it’s late, and I’m babbling. If work is reasonably sane tomorrow, I’ll try to look up some cites…unless someone who is a better legal researcher feels charitable and wants to help me out (hint, hint; I’m not a lawyer).
OK, I found a decision where a case was denied, in part, because of the would-be asylum applicant’s conviction history. It also outlines the various legal standards for asylum, witholding of deportation, and Convention against Torture claims. Here’s a synopsis (brief because I don’t want to get into copyright trouble with West Group):
“Withholding and Deferral of Removal
Matter of S-V-, Int. Dec. 3430 (BIA 2000).24 An applicant who is more likely than not to be subjected to severe physical or mental pain or suffering, but who is ineligible for asylum and withholding of removal due to a criminal conviction, may seek protection under Article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.25 Any applicant for relief under the Convention Against Torture must establish that the torture feared would be inflicted by or with the acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity; protection does not extend to persons who fear entities that a government is unable to control.”
You can find a link to the entire decision text at the Executive Office of Immigration Review’s Web site at:
I think the husband of Jan Wang, Canadian author of Red China Blues, was a Nam era US serviceman that ended up in China with asylum. It’s detailed in her book, but been a few years since I read it.
I am almost a lawyer and have studied international law and immigration law. At the moment I am essentially the human rights law expert at a well known organization that supports refugees. I know more about the relevant international law than the application in the U.S. immigration context, since I am not a practitioner.
The Convention relating to the Status of Refugees allows a person who “has committed a serious non-political crime outside the country of refuge prior to his admission” to be excluded (Article 1(f)). This allows states some flexibility in applying this provision, but considering that the prohibition on refoulement (expulsion or denial of entry) is not only found in this treaty but is also part of customary international law, this exception cannot be applied lightly. Congress modified the immigration code in order to bring it into line with the U.S. obligations under international law, and § 241(b)(3) mirrors the Refugee Convention. Within the framework of this convention and human rights law, it is impossible to imagine that statutory rape would fall into this category.
A person who is convicted of a “particularly serious crime” and who is “a danger to the community” may be excepted from asylum. It appears that you have confused the provisions related to crimes committed before entering the country and those committed after. Section 241(b)(3) defines “particularly serious crime” as an aggravated felony and certain drug offenses fall into this category. It sounds pretty ridiculous to me, but there’s not much that can be done, given this country’s attitude towards drugs and foreigners.
By the way, Eva Luna, the West Group does not hold copyrights on U.S. government works.
Back to the OP… Anyone who has a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” is eligible for asylum.
chula, I’m not a lawyer, nor do I even wish ever to undertake the process of becoming one. I did, however, spend 3-1/2 years as a court interpreter for the Office of the Immigration Judge (I also sent out all cases to the State Department for advisory opinions during a large chunk of that time, and monitored the receipt of these advisory opinions to make sure they addressed the same issues that the case did; you’d be surprised how often the feds would cut & paste text that applied to an entirely different country!). During my time there, I saw with my own eyes scores, if not hundreds, of people knocked out of consideration for political asylum because of nonpolitical crimes committed after they entered the U.S. This is how one ends up with situations like people being ordered deported to places like Vietnam or Cuba, where they haven’t lived since they were very small children.
When I get back to work on Monday, I’ll try to dig up some case law on what kinds of things have been ruled to be aggravated felonies and/or particularly serious crimes for immigration purposes. This definition is very different than the definition of “aggravated felony” for purposes of state criminal law, and at the moment is being applied retroactively to situations in which people pled guilty to crimes with the express understanding that the particular conviction would not knock them out of consideration for asylum, or would even not make them deportable. It’s entirely possible to be given probation for a specific ofense and still end up in deportation proceedings.
Also, I’m well aware that West Group doesn’t hold the copyright on U.S. government publications. The case synopsis I posted, however, was from West Group, not the U.S. Government, so I decided to play it safe.
You know, the code was revised in 1996. You said you worked in immigration court before the CAT was ratified, which was in 1994. So it doesn’t sound like you would have seen cases decided under the current law.
chula, true that I left Immigration Court in August 1994. However, I still read every issue of Interpreter Releases, most articles on immigration-related topics, including asylum and criminal issues, that come out on mainstream news sources (they are posted to an internal database at my firm), quite a number of other articles that deal with asylum issues (from law journals, etc.), and lobbying-type news releases from the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association, which monitors legislation and case law in this area quite closely.
I will follow up with more details next week, hopefully with help from a co-worker who practiced international human rights law before she switched to the somewhat less burnout-prone area of employment-based immigration. I promise you, though, that generally speaking, the U.S. judicial system has been expanding, not contracting, the types of crimes that will knock one out of consideration for asylum (again, not CAT claims, just asylum, since CAT confers no permanent right to remain in the U.S.)
Nope, but after 1 year asylees can apply for permanent residency (although there is a quota of 10,000 per year), which results in a queue which is about 4 years long at the moment. Refugees (those who are granted refugee status, subject to the same persecution criteria as asylees, but outside the U.S.) aren’t subject to the quota. There is no such path for CAT grantees. They are in legal limbo.
Over the years, LOTS of people have left the United States for political reasons. But I’m hesitant to say that many of them “sought asylum.”
I say that because one of the truly unique features of communist regimes was their reluctance to let people leave! There have been numerous repressive regimes in history, but… let’s see, who’s a good example… Francisco Franco didn’t mind in the least if Spaniards who hated him wanted to leave the country. His attitude was, “Swell! One less troublemaker for me to deal with.” Only communist regimes worked to PREVENT dissidents from ever leaving.
So, while many Spaniards fled the Franco regime, none had to “seek asylum,” because Franco wasn’t trying to keep them!
(A Cuban, on the other hand, has to seek asylum, because Castro claims virtual ownership of his citizens.)
Similarly, even people who’ve felt oppressed in the U.S. (and many have, for one reason or another) haven’t "sought asylum from other countries. They’ve just emigrated, and nobody’s made any effort to stop them.
Even if you want to leave your country and nobody will stop you, as a practical matter it would be nice to be able to stay legally in another country. So I’m sure Franco didn’t mind if his opponents left, but they might still find the need to seek asylum if for no other reason than to be allowed to stay legally wherever they ended up, since most of the countries where people tend to seek asylum also have controls on immigration. Just a thought…
