Senate Your asylum is in another country: Europe, refugees, and xenophobia.

Yes, but many of these conflicts drag on long enough to provide ample opportunity for radicalization. Logically then, wouldn't you support making the same support and resources available to them as you would to individuals who meet the current formal definition of refugee? That's why I said the definition would need to be "greatly expanded."

If your primary concern is preventing radicalism, shouldn't the cause of their displacement be far less important than the fact that they now displaced? I don't think I've ever seen any literature to support the notion that someone who is consciously versus indiscriminately harmed during a hot war is somehow more likely to turn to terrorism.

EDIT: I mean, to illustrate, if a bomb falls on someone's house and kills their whole family, is the idea that they'll rationalize it by saying "Yes, this all could have been avoided if the US accepted my asylum application, but on the other hand that missile wasn't really targeting me specifically nor am I being meaningfully targeted under any internationally-recognized category of identity or ideology from a demonstrable policy-making standpoint, so I really should just be okay with how this all turned out"?

 

I think you've misunderstood and are conflating issues Wocky. My concern with radicalism was that, in being a martyr, Germany bit off more than it could chew and that concentration risk needs to be managed.

 

Jabba-wocky Fleeing generalised violence (i.e. a war zone) definitely counts as a well-founded fear of persecution when someone applies for refugee status. It used to be in practice that you had to prove that you, as an individual, were targeted for persecution and that this persecution came from state actors but that's not the case anymore for people who come from war zones. On the other hand, people who flee dictatorships or more generally not-so-democratic countries where there isn't generalised violence still have to demonstrate that they are individually persecuted for their political opinions/religion/ethnicity/sexual orientation or whatnot.

"Risk of radicalisation", while a legitimate concern in geopolitical terms, doesn't really factor in this equation in terms of refugee law. The question isn't what you could become if you stayed where you were, it's what could happen to you, meaning if you could be killed, maimed, tortured, mistreated or otherwise harmed by staying there and exercising your rights as a citizen.

IDPs (internally displaced persons) is where refugee law hits a snag. IDPs are people who are displaced within their own country because of a war and they often face exactly the same fear of persecution (generalised violence) as refugees, yet they are not eligible for asylum because they're still within their own country. This has to do with national sovereignty -- the basic principle underpinning refugee law is that an asylum-seeker wants to avail him/herself of the protection of a country other than their own because their own country isn't able to protect them. To do this, you must have crossed a border, because as long as you are in your own country you still fall under the jurisdiction of that country. So there's this paradox that, in order to seek safety, you must already be one step closer to safety.

Lastly, it's not "well-founded fear of persecution upon refoulement", it's "well-founded fear of persecution", period. What determines your eligibility for asylum is the situation you faced when you left your country, and as long as that situation is there it's illegal for the country where you applied for asylum to send you back. Refoulement is a concept that applies to the legality of the actions of the host country, not to the status of refugees in that country.

(Oh, and just to clarify, I'm not an immigration-lawyer-turned-activist, I'm a human rights lawyer and I was always an activist )

 

Thanks Chyntuck - I was often responding on phone today so missing the nuance you added.

I think your point about people availing themselves of another state's protections and laws is valid, though it may be limiting in as far as the ability of IDPs to actually exit the country in question. But, similarly, an IDP is not necessarily a refugee either - not automatically, anyway.

 

Oh, the issue of protecting IDPS is a huge headache! And it's well above my pay grade to propose a solution to that, but it's definitely a problem that needs to be acknowledged. If you look at the people of Darfur for instance, some sought refuge in Chad and some were displaced within Darfur, but both groups fled for exactly the same reason: because the government of Sudan and its affiliated militias were attacking them. Yet those who are in camps in Chad are refugees under the protection of international refugee law (and therefore eligible for goodies like resettlement in third countries), while those who remained in IDP camps within Sudan are supposedly under the protection of the very government that's attacking them.

There could theoretically be situations where an IDP wouldn't be eligible for refugee status if he/she crossed a border (e.g. the population of a border area that was pushed further into their home country because of a war with a neighbouring country) but I can't think of any such cases from the top of my head, at least not among the nationalities I usually deal with. In the last few decades there has been a shift from cross-border conflicts to internal conflicts, so de facto you have a situation where IDPs are people who would be refugees if only they could cross a border.

 

I guess the assessment would have to assess how quickly they could exercise a right of return?

 

I don't understand the question, can you please rephrase it?

 

If the IDP can be returned to their home in relatively short order and without any fear of persecution...

 

IDP isn't a legal status, it's just a descriptor for people who were forcibly displaced within their own country for whatever reason: war, natural disaster, land grabs for large-scale development projects, etc. IDPs don't have any different rights or benefits than other citizens of their country, unless the government of that country chooses to establish a specific legal framework for them (which doesn't happen very often, especially not in situations where the government is the cause of displacement). So basically, no, there's no assessment, because there's no one to do it.

 

I say we take in the entire population of Syria, come hell or high water. There's more than enough room on this continent for all of them. If they can't find jobs or contribute to society, who cares...we can figure that out later...anything is better than leaving them to Assad's depredations.

 

Alpha this is why people don't take you seriously.

 

That's what we did in Canada, we took in about 25,000 with the goal being 50,000 eventually.

Some nice stories about Syrian refugees adapting to Canada: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmon...to-help-fort-mcmurray-fire-evacuees-1.3581122

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/world/americas/canada-syrian-refugees.html?_r=0

 

25000. Woohoo.

 

Actually that stat was outdated it's up to 40 000 now: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/refugees/welcome/index.asp

And Canada is 1/10th the population of US, 40 000 is quite a lot relative to our population.

 

Okay, why the heck not? The only obstacle to this is that people here don't want refugees coming in, but that view is subject to change. Granted it's exceedingly unlikely to change, but somebody's got to put this idea out there.

 

So, your grand humanitarian solution is to depopulate one country and create a huge social crisis in another, in the name of sunshine and rainbows?

 

Me: Alpha, that was a silly idea. Peak silly.
Alpha: Hold my beer!

OK let's entertain this for a second. It doesn't deserve it, but let's tackle your Ghost-like approach to the situation.

Firstly; a lot of people, like, a lot, in the country actually supports Assad. I know this seems shocking, but it's true. There is a reason why his regime didn't fall and Mubarak's did.

"But, but... liberty!" you say, tenting slightly at the mention of this divine concept.

Go out and see the world, I'd respond. Most people will take security over liberty any day. The only people who really get a stiffy at the idea of freedom are you lot, and you run around rubbing that stiffy in people's faces and ramming it down their throats.

So to take on the population of Syria, you'd have to take 18mil people of which about 10mil support Assad, and would be expatriated against their will. ****ing ingrates, don't they know they're going to get diabetes and no health care, in the land that Jesus built?

You'd then have to support these people. The main thing of value you can ensure is that they're ready to enter the workforce, since the overwhelming refrain from refugees is that they want to work so they can build a future for themselves and where applicable, their families. Those verbs - work, build - are crucial here.

Mere welfare assistance, in a country that hates the idea of being decent people so much as to wage war on the concept, is not going to be enough. Your hatred as a nation for welfare is one thing, but you have an enabling bigot in the highest office in the land. What exactly, besides greed and consumption, can you offer them? Peace? Ha. They're brown, your police will decimate them for like... no reason.

Plus, given the Iranian/Syrian relationship, it's highly likely most Syrians have a dim view of America, so why would they want to go to the US? For Freedom? On most indices, you're not free. For economics? But they're penniless refugees, they'll be more likely to be disenfranchised that enfranchised. For democracy? Gerrymandering ensures that doesn't count. For tolerance? You know it doesn't mean the same thing as intolerance right? For culture? Ha, good one.

Basically what you have done is the equivalent of an 8 year old writing to the President with an idea to solve world peace which requires all people everywhere to have no agency or no differences, and to be happy with proximity to something you guys think is spiffy but isn't. There's a massive shortcoming in the way in which we deal with refugees now. It needs to be solved properly, which to say it needs to be solved without the USA. You just do not know how to do sensible policy, so nobody benefits from asking you to be an architect in the process.

 

Just as long as the 'lock them up and rape them' Australians aren't involved in any decision making regarding immigration and refugees, we'll work something out.

 

The Labour party won't be best pleased with that sweeping xenophobia, V-2.

 

UKIP will probably remain delighted with whatever opinion you claim to have this week.

 

Just to defend Australia for a minute, we don't just lock them up and rape them, we sometimes torture them and beat them as well. Get it right please.

 

We also have a >50% rate of non-asylum seekers arriving by boat, Lost. Non-partisan report confirmed this. We have a deterrant that both parties have accepted is inevitable, and the sad thing is we've outsourced it to third party contractors who are complete ****s.

Why we ever dismantled the pacific solution I'll never know... Oh, wait, yes, Rudd.

 

Are all immigrants still interned on Nauru pending application processing? I've envied Nauru for having the opportunity to completely run their tiny island's economy on that lease, ever since I heard of that arrangement. Their goose laid a platinum egg.