AsylumU.S. to Consider Overhauling Asylum System
In an interview with the Associated Press last week, Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, said that if Donald Trump wins a second term, the administration would use agreements with Central American governments — the “Asylum Cooperative Agreements” — as models to get countries around the world, possibly in Africa and Asia, to field asylum claims from people seeking refuge in the United States. The two principles undergirding the projected asylum policy — the First Country of Asylum principle the Safe Third Country principle – form the basis for the Dublin Regulation which governs EU asylum policy.
In an interview with the Associated Press last week, Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, said that if Donald Trump wins a second term, the administration would use agreements with Central American governments — the “Asylum Cooperative Agreements” — as models to get countries around the world to field asylum claims from people seeking refuge in the United States.
Miller said the agreements would help stop “asylum fraud, asylum shopping and asylum abuse on a global scale.”
The “Asylum Cooperative Agreements,” which the administration put together in 2019, have allowed the United States to fly asylum seekers from El Salvador and Honduras to be flown to Guatemala for an opportunity to seek asylum there, denying them a chance to apply in the U.S.
Only 20 Salvadorans out of the 939 flown to Guatemala from the United States, applied for asylum there. The rest chose to return to El Salvador.
AP notes that administration officials have been considering adding African and Asian countries to the system, thus creating a global network of agreements similar to those with the three Central American governments. Such agreements would be offered to countries such as Cameroon or China, from which a large number of asylum-seekers arrive in the United States.
Background
Miller’s proposals raise these questions: Which country is responsible for processing asylum applications? And when can people who need protection be sent to another country against their will?
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) says that the First Country of Asylum principle may justify the decision to return asylum seekers to another country, that is: a country may reject a person’s asylum application if they have already been granted protection by another country, or if they had failed to apply for asylum in the first “safe country” they arrived at after escaping their own country.
This is often referred to as the Safe Third Country principle. The principle says that the person escaping persecution should seek asylum in the first country in which he or she is deemed safe – not in the country further afield to which they want to go for economic, family, or other reasons.
