This news account in the International Herald Tribune of a report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reminded me that we don’t write often enough about asylum. Asylees are people who claim persecution of some sort (political, religious, etc) but have usually already arrived on a country’s doorstep. Simply being an economic migrant doesn’t count.
Once granted asylum, at least in the US, the person is given the same perks that a refugee receives—a caseworker, food stamps, cash help, job counseling and so forth.
The UNHCR says the number of asylum seekers worldwide has risen in the last year, but is still only half of what it was in 2001.
PARIS: Turmoil in Afghanistan and Somalia swelled the ranks of asylum-seekers last year, driving refugee numbers higher for a second consecutive year after they dropped to a two-decade low in 2006, the United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday.
Iraqis remained the single largest population of people seeking protection in industrialized countries, but their numbers fell 10 percent in 2008 from the previous year, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said.
Overall, the United States remained the chief destination for refugees from all countries, receiving 13 percent of total applications.
In all, about 383,000 people made new asylum requests in 51 countries in 2008, according to the U.N. agency. That was 12 percent more than the 341,000 who sought protection the previous year, and more than the 307,000 who sought assistance in 2006, when numbers fell to a 20-year low.
Still, the 2008 figures were well below level of 2001, when 623,000 people lodged new asylum claims, the U.N. agency said in a report on asylum trends in industrialized countries in 2008.
You can get the full report here. See also the 2007 Yearbook of Immigrant Statistics for more fun with numbers, here. We actually have more asylees entering the US than refugees and those asylees had the where-with-all to get here and are not screened in advance by Homeland Security as are refugees.
And for those who think Sweden is so kind, so diverse, so humane, so much better than the US, take note. Looks like they may be full-up.
Sweden tightened its rules last year, resulting in a drop of two-thirds in the number of Iraqis who requested protection there.
See “Muslim immigration killing Sweden” here.