Human Rights Law Commons^™

Conscientious Objection To Military Service: A Report To The United Nations Division Of Human Rights, Jonathan M. Engram

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Displaced Persons: "The New Refugees" (The Dean Rusk Award Recipient), David Hull

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Problems With The Application Of Norms Governing Interstate Armed Conflict To Non-International Armed Conflict, Waldemar A. Solf

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Believable Victims: Asylum Credibility And The Struggle For Objectivity, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

Asylum adjudication is often the invisible frontline in the struggle by oppressed groups to gain recognition for their plights. Through this process, individual people must tell their stories and try to show that they are genuine victims of persecution rather than simply illegal immigrants attempting to slip through the system. In 2002, because the world had not yet acknowledged the nature of the calamity from which they were escaping, many Darfurian asylum cases would have relied on the ability of each individual to convince government offices to believe their stories. They would have had to be deemed “credible,” or they …

The Changing Tide Of Immigration Law: Equality For All?, Laurie M. Cochran

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Does The European Convention On Human Rights Protect Refugees From "Safe" Countries?, Kathleen M. Whitney

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

A Comparative Study Of Social And Economic Rights Of Asylum Seekers And Refugees In The United States And The United Kingdom, Bobana Ugarkovic

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

M.S.S. V. Belgium And Greece (European Court Of Human Rights): The Interplay Between European Union Law And The European Convention On Human Rights In The Post-Lisbon Era, Ton Zuijdwijk

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Multiple Nationality And Refugees, Jon Bauer

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Persons with more than one nationality ("multiple nationals") who flee persecution in their home country may have compelling reasons to seek asylum elsewhere rather than go to a second country of nationality where they have no ties or face serious hardships. The 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, however, expressly makes them ineligible for refugee status unless they have a well-founded fear of being persecuted in all their countries of nationality. The U.S. Refugee Act omits this exclusionary language but nonetheless has been read by immigration agencies as if it incorporated the Convention's approach. This Article challenges …

Problems Faced By Mexican Asylum Seekers In The United States, Anna Cabot

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Violence in Mexico rose sharply in response to President Felipe Calder6n's military campaign against drug cartels which began in late 2006. As a consequence, the number of Mexicans who have sought asylum in the United States has grown significantly. In 2013, Mexicans made up the second largest group of defensive asylum seekers (those in removal proceedings) in the United States, behind only China (EOIR 2014b). Yet between 2008 and 2013, the grant rate for Mexican asylum seekers in immigration court fell from 23 percent to nine percent (EOIR 2013, 2014b). This paper examines-from the perspective of an attorney who represented …

The Syrian Crisis And The Principle Of Non-Refoulement, Mike Sanderson

International Law Studies

No abstract provided.

An Insurmountable Obstacle: Denying Deference To The Bia’S Social Visibility Requirement, Kathleen Kersh

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In the last fifteen years, the Board of Immigration Appeals has imposed a requirement that persons seeking asylum based on membership in a particular social group must establish that the social group is “socially visible” throughout society. This Comment argues that the social visibility requirement should be denied administrative deference on several grounds. The requirement should be denied Chevron deference because Congress’s intent behind the Refugee Act of 1980 is clear and unambiguous and, alternatively, the requirement is an impermissible interpretation of the statute. The requirement is also arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedures Act. This Comment argues that …

The Opulent Or The Oppressed? Expedited Removal As A Violation Of The American Ideal, Amy Wingfield

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Helping The Helpless: The Foreign Policy Strategies Underlying Humanitarian Rhetoric In American Refugee Law And Policy, Ashleigh Reif Kasper

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Municipal And State Sanctuary Declarations: Innocuous Symbolism Or Improper Dictates?, Jorge L. Carro

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Negotiating Uncertainty In The Right To Asylee Status, Erin Rider

Societies Without Borders

The asylum system regards asylum seekers as actors with privilege and resources, and expects them to present sound cases documenting their rights to asylee status. However, the asylum system fails to consider the lack of autonomy of asylum seekers, as they must manage trauma, lack of resources, new host societies, and the asylum process. Based on interviews (n=14) with asylum seekers, general findings reveal that inherent barriers within the asylum system position asylum seekers into a context of insecurity that undermines their agency and ability to achieve asylee status. The examination of asylum seekers interacting with the United States asylum …

Optimal Asylum, Shalini B. Ray

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The U.S. asylum system is noble but flawed. Scholars have long recognized that asylum is a "scarce" political resource, but U.S. law persists in distributing access to asylum based on an asylum seeker's ability to circumvent migration controls rather than the strength of the asylum seeker's claim for protection. To apply for asylum, an asylum seeker must either arrange to be smuggled into the United States or lie to the consulate while abroad to obtain a nonimmigrant visa. Nonimmigrant visa requirements effectively filter the pool of asylum applicants according to wealth, educational attainment, and intent not to remain in the …

An End To The Violence: Justifying Gender As A "Particular Social Group", Suzanne Sidun

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Discretionary (In)Justice: The Exercise Of Discretion In Claims For Asylum, Kate Aschenbrenner

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Section 208(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act provides that asylum may be granted to an applicant who meets the definition of a refugee-that is, someone who has been persecuted or has a well-founded fear of future persecution in her own country on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Asylum is a discretionary form of relief which means that the United States government is not required to grant asylum to every refugee within the United States but instead may decide whether or not to do so. This Article sets out in Part …

We Don't Need To See Them Cry: Eliminating The Subjective Apprehension Element Of The Well-Founded Fear Analysis For Child Refugee Applicants, Bridgette A. Carr

Pepperdine Law Review

This article addresses a barrier to effective protection faced by child refugee applicants. Currently all refugee applicants, including infants, are required to satisfy two elements of well-founded fear. All applicants must prove that they face an objective risk of persecution and that they subjectively fear this risk. But children often cannot exhibit the subject apprehension element of the test. As a result, UNHCR, and the U.S and Canadian governments issued guidelines that encourage decision makers to accept other evidence to prove a child's subjective apprehension when the child is unable to exhibit fear. However, this approach does not go far …

Refugees And Asylum, James C. Hathaway

Book Chapters

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European governments enacted a series of immigration laws under which international migration was constrained in order to maximise advantage for States. These new, largely selfinterested laws clashed with the enormity of a series of major population displacements within Europe, including the flight of more than a million Russians between 1917 and 1922, and the exodus during the early 1920s of hundreds of thousands of Armenians from Turkey. The social crisis brought on by the de facto immigration of so many refugees - present without authorisation in countries where they enjoyed no protection …

Queer Cases Make Bad Law, James C. Hathaway, Jason Pobjoy

Articles

The Refugee Convention, now adopted by 147 states, is the primary instrument governing refugee status under international law. The Convention sets a binding and nonamendable definition of which persons are entitled to recognition as refugees, and thus to enjoy the surrogate or substitute national protection of an asylum state. The core of the article 1A(2) definition provides that a refugee is a person who has a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership of a particular social group.” A person is thus a refugee, and entitled to the non-refoulement and other protections …

Balancing National Security And International Responsibility: The Immigration System’S Legal Duty To Asylees Fleeing Gang Violence In Central America, Margot Kniffin

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Spaces Of Freedom For Citizens And Asylees In The Eu And U.S., Francis J. Conte

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Welcoming Women: Recent Changes In U.S. Asylum Law, Jillian Blake

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The Statue of Liberty, which has been called the "Mother of Exiles," stands as a reminder of one of the foundational ideals of U.S. immigration policy-providing refuge to the vulnerable. Women worldwide have new reason to believe in this promise, because victims of domestic violence may now have a better chance of being granted asylum in a U.S. immigration court.

Left Out In The Cold: Trafficking Victims, Gender, And Misinterpretation Of The Refugee Convention's "Nexus" Requirement, Martina Pomeroy

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Victims of human trafficking who seek international protection in their country of destination face a steep uphill battle. Special visa programs designed to regularize their status are often riddled with conditions that make them inaccessible to all but a very few victims. Despite widespread international agreement that the manifold harms inflicted upon the majority of trafficked persons generally rise to the level of persecution, and therefore that victims should be eligible to apply for asylum, many national courts misinterpret international refugee law standards and routinely deny refugee status to deserving applicants. Courts often refuse to recognize persecution on the basis …

Refugee Credibility Assessment And The “Religious Imposter” Problem, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

Credibility assessment in refugee status determination (RSD) poses unique challenges when the outcome of asylum applications turns on the question of whether an asylum seeker is actually a member of a persecuted religious minority. These cases require secular adjudicators to delve into matters of religious identity and faith that are, by their nature, subjective and beyond the realm of objective analysis. This Article explores practical means of addressing this challenge through a case study of the RSD interviews of Eritrean asylum seekers in Egypt who based their refugee claims on Pentecostal religious associations. Analysis of the interview methods used in …

Leveraging Asylum, James C. Hathaway

Articles

I believe that the analysis underlying the leveraged right to asylum is conceptually flawed. As I will show, there is no duty of non-refoulement that binds all states as a matter of customary international law and it is not the case that all persons entitled to claim protection against refoulement of some kind are ipso facto entitled to refugee rights. These claims are unsound precisely because the critical bedrock of a real international legal obligation-namely, the consent of states evinced by either formal commitments or legally relevant actions -does not yet exist.

Revisiting Germany's Residenzpflicht In Light Of Modern E.U. Asylum Law, Paul Mcdonough

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note explores whether the E.C. treaties, nonetheless, provide the European Court of Justice (ECJ) sufficient competence to use the Reception Directive as a vehicle to assess the Residenzpflicht in relation to the Refugee Convention. It concludes that, through the Residenzpflicht, Germany denies refugees lawfully present their Convention right to free movement within its territory, and that the ECJ can order the restoration of this right.

Socio-Economic Rights And Refugee Status: Deepening The Dialogue Between Human Rights And Refugee Law, Fatma E. Marouf, Deborah Anker

Scholarly Works

Over the past two decades, international human rights law has provided an increasingly useful framework for interpreting key criteria of the definition of a refugee. A human rights-based approach to analyzing refugee status helps to increase consistency and uniformity in decision making by state parties regarding who qualifies for international protection.

Michelle Foster's book, International Refugee Law and Socio-economic Rights: Refuge from Deprivation (Cambridge U. Press 2007), comes at a critical time, not only because of increasing acceptance of the connection between refugee law and human rights law and significant developments in the current understanding of economic and social rights, …