Please remember the millions of people around the world forced from their homes, whose only hope of return is to not be forgotten,” says Angelina Jolie, a Goodwill Ambassador with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.  She has released a 30-second World Refugee Day video.  For this day, June 20th, she speaks on thousands who “flee from conflict and persecution [and] might be prevented from returning home for years — or forever.”

We must think of stories like those of John – the volatile North Kivu province stole the lives of this fifteen-year-old Congolese refugee’s family last year.  He says he now only dreams of a mattress and the chance to learn English. With the help of the UNHCR, he has applied for an asylum in Kenya and he now lives just that much closer to a dream come true. John is one of around 50,000 registered refugees and asylum-seekers in Nairobi, Kenya, including 951 unaccompanied minors, who have escaped from the conflict in North Kivu.

There are more than 40 million uprooted people around the world. The theme, this year is “home.” John says he has no desire to return to North Kivu, where the violence has driven more than 1 million from their homes. UNHCR says, “Help us help them to find a place to call home.” It is time for us to think about what it means to be one of those millions of individual human beings.  UNHCR helps John and others find new homes and new futures through resettlement, voluntary repatriation and local integration. According to the UNHCR, most refugees prefer to return to their home countries despite continuing or escalating conflict, which makes the search for homes and the return to normal living increasingly difficult.

In honor of World Refugee Day the International Detention Coalition (IDC) is urging governments to stop the detention of refugees and asylum seekers and to work together with UN and civil society to ensure their protection. They say-

There has been a disturbing and growing trend in the past year of industrialized countries funding, pressuring and providing incentives to neighboring countries to detain asylum seekers…There is evidence that detention is not an effective deterrent of asylum seekers. Punitive detention policies fail to consider the conditions that force people to flee their homes. They further traumatize refugees fleeing persecution, torture and conflict. Deterrence policies shift the burden to neighboring countries. It encourages harsh and harmful border policies that do not resolve the issue of irregular migration and people fleeing for protection. These issues must be tackled through international, regional and national cooperation, within a framework of refugee protection.

From June 18-20, the UNHCR is planning World Refugee Day events around the world to highlight the plight of refugees under its care and to advocate for the help they need. Get involved in soccer games, film festivals, photo exhibitions, food bazaars, fashion shows, concerts and sports competitions, workshops, speeches, poetry recitals and more.  In addition, you can participate in the following upcoming major events: A Historic Refugee Discussion,” with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr; and “World Refugee Day performance by Marta Gomez”, which is free and open to the public. You can also organize an event in your area.  In honor of World Refugee Day, the Empire State Building in NYC will light up in UNHCR blue.

Photo courtesy of oxfam.org.uk

This week marks the thirtieth anniversary of the monumental Refugee Protection Act of 1980 marking a historic moment which created a legal status for asylum and a formal process for the resettling of refugees from around the world, affirming that the protection of all victims of persecution is an integral part of U.S. policy. Senator Edward Kennedy, who worked tirelessly for over a decade to secure the passage of this Act ensured an impartial and consistent system of asylum and resettlement for anyone

who is unable or unwilling to return to his country of nationality because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.

In the thirty years since the passage of the Refugee Protection Act, the U.S. has granted asylum to over half a million people and has been responsible for the resettlement of nearly two and a half million refugees. But these successes have been undermined by national security measures post 9/11 which have practically shut the resettlement system down, leading to President Obama having to sign a Presidential Determination authorizing the admission of 80,000 refugees in 2010 because of failures in the system.

In November 2009, a Human Rights First report reported that since 2001, over 18,000 refugees have faced delays or been denied asylum because of the USA Patriot Act of 2001 and the Real ID Act of 2005 that labeled them “terrorists”. Following 9/11, these acts expanded the scope of laws defining material support to terrorist activity so that thousands of men, women and children who had faced rebel armies and fought for democracy in their countries were denied asylum even while they had fought for causes supported by the U.S.

But this isn’t the only way the system has faltered. Increasing numbers of asylum seekers are locked into detention for months, sometimes years, while pursuing their asylum case. Like Jean Pierre Kamwa, who fought for democracy in Cameroon and facing severe mental and physical abuse came to seek protection in the United States, only to be locked up for four months in a windowless detention center in New Jersey, until he was granted asylum. But Jean Pierre was lucky because he got pro-bono help from a lawyer. Many are deported because they do not have enough access to information in substandard detention centers and are unable to explain their cases to an immigration judge adequately.

That’s what makes Senator Patrick Leahy’s introduction of the Refugee Protection Act 2010 so momentous. If passed, the legislation would strengthen legal protections for those seeking asylum in the United States and ensure that more people who deserve protection can benefit from it. Co-sponsored by Senators Carl Levin, Richard Durbin and Daniel Akaka, the bill addresses flaws in the current system including ensuring a nation-wide alternatives to detention program, access to counsel, medical care and family visits while in detention. The bill also eliminates the requirement that asylum applicants file a claim within one-year of arrival in the U.S. giving more leeway to those needing protection, protects particularly vulnerable asylum seekers like the LGBT community by ensuring they can pursue a claim even where their persecution is not socially visible, and modifies the material support and terrorism bars in the law.

While the bill rallies up support to pass the Senate, the National Immigrant Justice Center and 30 nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, and academics are filing petitions with the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice requesting similar regulations allowing the release of detained asylum seekers who pose no danger to the community so that these can be implemented on an administrative level as well while the bill is being debated.

The act would go a long way to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to the U.N. Refugee convention and provide a safe haven for the persecuted so call on your senators to support it.

Photo courtesy of humanrightsfirst.org

But by providing temporary asylum to those whose homeland is devastated by the recent earthquake, Obama also has opened the door a little wider to the issue that many consider the most pressing of our time: the plight of environmental refugees.

Provide a permanent and systematic procedure for the admission of refugees of special humanitarian concern to the United States and to provide comprehensive and uniform provisions for the effective resettlement and absorption of those refugees who are admitted.

The Act defines a refugee as someone who is:

Outside his country of nationality (or in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which he last habitually resided), and who is unable or unwilling to return to such country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.

The White House release said that while the economic recession had presented new challenges to maintaining this and other humanitarian programs, the administration had “undertaken an in-depth review of the program with the goal of strengthening support to both the refugees and the communities in which they are being resettled.” In light of this declaration of strengthening support to refugees, it is shocking that the Department of Homeland Security has taken to detaining refugees who have not adjusted to Lawful Permanent Resident (LPR) status after having been in the country for one year (also known as “unadjusted refugees”). While some of these refugees are apprehended by ICE after encounters with local law enforcement for minor offenses, some are taken in without any criminal charges at all. These refugees are then held in detention facilities for the entire duration of time that it takes for the application to be received and processed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

As per section 209 (a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), those refugees who have not acquired Permanent Residency within one year of residing in the U.S., “…shall, at the end of such year period, return or be returned to the custody of the Department of Homeland Security for inspection and examination for admission…” According to an article by Emily Creighton on Immigration Impact, ICE is misinterpreting “return to custody” too literally to allow for those refugees to be detained while USCIS processes their application.

This interpretation is particularly unfair since the law prohibits refugees from applying for permanent residence until one year after they have been admitted to the U.S. as refugees. In essence, ICE detains refugees for not doing what the law bars them from doing…DHS’ policy of detaining unadjusted refugees is extremely problematic—it is not required by the language of the statute and is unsupported by the policies that drove lawmakers to pass laws protecting refugees. The word “custody” in the statute does not require ICE to take physical custody of unadjusted refugees, something ICE’s predecessor organization recognized. The former Immigration and Nationality Service reasoned that “custody” in INA 209(a) could be satisfied by simply requiring refugees to apply for adjustment of status and compelling them to appear at the agency.

Not only do some of these application review processes take up to a year, but pursuing this application while in ICE custody can lead to further legal complications for the refugees. A number of human rights, refugee assistance and other advocacy groups have been urging DHS to change this policy of detention and have written numerous letters over the years to ensure that DHS and ICE adopt a more humane policy towards refugees that respects the long-standing national policy of protecting and rehabilitating refugees rather than further incarcerating them.

While the ISAP II program which is designed to allow individuals who present a low flight risk to avoid incarceration by agreeing to regular monitoring offers an alternative, the Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Erika Feller, believes that it’s still too early to know whether or not this offers the best alternative for asylum seekers; “the objectives of many alternatives to detention systems are enforcement objectives. UNHRC believes that humanitarian considerations should take on a higher profile.”

Still many asylum-seekers in the United States are held in detention centers, alongside those facing immigration and criminal charges, while their cases are being processed.  The most recent figures from DHS indicate that approximately 10,000 of the more than 300,000 individuals detained were asylum seekers. According to a 2003 report published by the Physicians For Human Rights and entitled ‘From Persecution to Prison: The Health Consequences of Detention for Asylum Seekers‘, being detained further can be severely traumatic and detrimental for people who are fleeing persecution, threat and torture in their own countries.

Detention can induce fear, isolation and hopelessness, and exacerbate the severe psychological distress frequently exhibited by asylum seekers who are already traumatized…Physicians, experienced in evaluating and caring for asylum seekers, found extremely high symptom levels of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among the detained.

In our video, Restore Fairness, Jean-Pierre Kamwa, an asylum seeker from Cameroon, provides a powerful testimony on the psychological ramifications of seeking protection only to be incarcerated when he landed in JFK airport.

Photo courtesy of www.physiciansforhumanrights.org

Out of the 18,000 cases, 7,500 are in limbo after having been put on hold or delayed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Most of these are people who are already in the U.S. and have filed for permanent residency. However, the delays are thwarting efforts of these people to bring over their family members, many of whom remain in stuck in very dangerous and difficult situations in their home countries.

While this situation can be traced back to provisions instituted in the 1990s, the USA Patriot Act of 2001 and the 2005 Real ID Act expanded the scope of laws dealing with “terrorist organizations”, “terrorist activity” and “material support” in ways that ensured that thousands of men, women and children who comprised of people who were abducted by rebel armies, who fought for democracy in their countries, and doctors who provided medical care to the wounded in accordance with their occupational obligation, were denied asylum even while they had fought for causes that the U.S. supports.

At the center of the report lie personal stories of those affected by these provisions. The most striking is that of a young girl who was kidnapped by a rebel group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, forced to take part in armed conflict, and threatened for her work against the use of children in armed conflict. Her application for asylum has been on hold for a year because of her previous involvement in armed conflict.

In another case, a refugee from Burundi was detained in U.S. county jails for 20 months because DHS and the immigration judge that heard his case decided that he had provided “material support” to a rebel group when the rebels had, in fact, forcibly robbed him of 4 dollars and food. Sachin Karmakar, a Bangladeshi man who advocated for religious minorities and was facing persecution for his work, was granted asylum but not permanent residency because he was involved in Bangladesh’s 1971 fight for independence from India.

Calling for reform, the report details that although DHS has been trying to deal with this situation by granting discretionary waivers, it has been piecemeal and is clearly not enough. They suggest that Congress amends the notion of “Tier III terrorist organizations” and the definition of “terrorist activity” to be more specific and appropriate.

The INA’s sloppy definition of a “Tier III terrorist organization” is causing groups that the U.S. does not treat as “terrorist” in any other context to be defined in this way…refugees who pose no threat to the U.S., and are not guilty of any conduct for which the U.S. would legitimately want to exclude them, are being denied the protection they need or are unable to obtain permanent residence or reunited with their spouses or children. Any non-citizens who do pose a threat to the U.S. or who are guilty of actual terrorist acts or other crimes are already covered by other provisions of the immigration law, so that the “Tier III” definition is being used overwhelmingly against people who were not its intended targets.

Moreover the Human Rights Watch report demands that DHS -

adopt a more effective and fair approach to granting “waivers”, one that allows people initially applying for asylum, refugee status or other relief to be considered for waivers based on an individualized assessment of their actions, that permits prompt adjudication of the large mass of applications for permanent residence and family reunification of people…and that ensures that no refugee is deported without being considered for a waiver if eligible for one under law.

Anwen Hughes, the author of the report, says that the speed at which Congress and the Obama administration is dealing with situation is disastrously slow. She said that change is critical in order to ensure that the immigration laws are no longer used to exclude legitimate refugees from the protection the U.S. is committed to offering them.

Photo courtesy of www.humanrightsfirst.org