Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Obtaining asylum

I happened across a Department of Homeland Security report from last month on the numbers of refugees and asylees admitted into the United States in 2007. If we take a look at asylees, that is, those people already in the U.S. who argue they would be persecuted in their country of origin, we see the following:

--Colombia is consistently second on the list (to China) but the numbers are decreasing significantly every year. An important question, of course, is whether the number of people wanting asylum has dropped, or just the number of people getting it.

--Venezuela has been fourth on the list (with Haiti third) for the past three years. This is very politicized (as refugee/asylee status was for Nicaraguans vs. Salvadorans in the 1980s) and would be a great topic of research.

--Guatemala and El Salvador are also on the top 10, a reminder that civil wars (not to mention U.S. foreign policy) reverberates for years.

--Finally, China is first on the list and far above the rest in volume and went up in 2007. Hope those Olympics were fun.

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