Nowhere to turn

In the wake of 11 September, refugees and asylum seekers may find that no doors are open to them, writes Nyier Abdou
A refugee knows what it means to suffer at the hands of others for no reason other than the skin he was born in, the land he lives on, or the beliefs he has embraced. And yet a refugee gambles on the kindness of others. He trusts that he will be recognised for what he is and given the chance to trade in the poor hand he was dealt for a clean slate. Today, this trust may be the weakest link in the escape from persecution.
These are dark days for legal aliens abroad. Governments in North America and Europe are rethinking their policies about immigration and revisiting anti-terrorism legislation, treading deep into the no-go zone once guarded by people's reverence for civil liberties.
Countries like Britain and the US have long prided themselves as offering succour to political refugees, offering a safe base for activists, writers and political dissidents expelled by regimes deemed repressive. But this hallowed principle is now being dismissed as wantonly naive. Stephen Castles, director of the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) at the University of Oxford, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the 11 September attacks are seen by the centre as a "major threat" to asylum policies and humanitarian action.
"There is evidence of a rising tide of xenophobia against people of different -- and particularly Middle Eastern -- appearance in the US, UK and Europe, Castles said. "I believe that only a small minority of Western populations behave in a xenophobic way, but that is still threatening to immigrants and asylum seekers."
Many regimes that have grappled with terrorism at home have long criticised European countries like Britain, Germany and the Netherlands for "lax" asylum laws, warning that countries that refuse to extradite wanted suspects due to insufficient evidence or fears of an unfair trial were inviting trouble. Many of the alleged hijackers from the 11 September attacks are believed to have had links to organisations in Europe and while some of them were found to have no record in the US, 13 of the 19 suspects entered the country through legal channels, simply overstaying their visas or slipping through the cracks in the system. With new anti-terrorism legislation in the US, Canada and Britain sanctioning a deep mistrust of foreigners, the most pressing concern among aid agencies and human rights groups is that legitimate refugees and asylum seekers will be left out in the cold.
Wendy Young, director of government relations at the New York-based Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children (WCRWC) says that "Prior to September 11th, we were witnessing some momentum toward revisiting provisions in US law that have had a detrimental impact on asylum seekers." As soon as the tragedy occurred, the environment for such changes shifted dramatically." Noting that the commission is worried about discriminatory asylum and immigration policies against Arabs and Muslims, Young warned that national security simply cannot come at the expense of the country's responsibility to protect refugees -- many of whom have "fled the very same abusers that we are now dealing with in the context of terrorism."
Pressure to crack down on human trafficking, combined with the burden of processing waves of immigrants and asylum seekers in Europe, has made immigration a hot topic in the months ahead of the US attacks. Britain received some 76,000 asylum applications last year, with Iraqis, Sri Lankans and Afghans topping the list of nationalities seeking refugee status.
"The difficulty is not that the asylum law is 'lax'," British asylum lawyer Charles James told the Weekly. "The difficulty is that we do not have enough Immigration Officers, Home Office case workers, Home Office lawyers and asylum courts to administer the numbers involved. Then, if people lose their cases and hide, we have difficulty finding them to put them on an aeroplane."
On 3 October, the European Parliament agreed to draw up common laws on asylum and immigration that would expand the definition of "refugee". The effort is admirable, but in practice, asylum seekers face widespread efforts to keep immigrants out. Britain announced that it will be overhauling extradition laws and imposing new restrictions on immigration in its efforts to ensure that suspects with "terrorist links" will not be able to misuse the asylum system to enter the country. Earlier this month, Austria unveiled new legislation that will require asylum seekers to be fingerprinted. "Integration" courses for foreigners and non-permanent residents will be mandatory. In North America, the US's controversial Anti-terrorism Act of 2001 (ATA) edged closer to law when the Senate passed a version of the bill last Thursday. Following suit, Canada announced on Monday its own far-reaching anti-terrorism bill that largely resembles ATA. The US State Department is also reconsidering the 29 countries whose citizens are allowed to enter the US for 90 days without a visa.
Pary Karadaghi of the US-based Kurdish Human Rights Watch told the Weekly that while the new immigration laws of 1996 had already made it extremely difficult for asylum seekers in the US, "This will make it worse." Karadaghi said that already the cases of "racial profiling and others manifestations of xenophobia" are rising. Noting the palpably negative impact the attacks have had on the lives of Muslim and non-Muslim immigrants, Karadaghi remarked, "Unfortunately the terrorist attacks committed by 'visitors' to the US and others on student visas will affect all immigrants and refugees."
The RSC's Stephen Castles says that an atmosphere of suspicion and hostility towards asylum seekers and refugees is building. "This trend existed already -- for the last three to four years there has been growing concern about increasing numbers of asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants in European countries," says Castles. "This has led to tighter entry rules, more surveillance and practices of detention of asylum seekers. The 11 September events have made the climate worse, and increased public support for strict control, even at the cost of civil liberties."
Conservative leaders in the US, Canada and Europe are clinging to the new legislation as a chance to keep possible terrorists out. But one of the most contentious parts of post-11 September legislation is a dangerously broad definition of terrorism. The new legislation could make it easy to define so many benign organisations as supporting terrorism, particularly in countries where many aid and development programmes are run by religious organisations.
Immigration and refugee organisations are fretting over how people will prove "legitimate" claims for asylum when there is such strong sentiment against the very ethnic and religious groups that seek asylum the most. To be recognised as a refugee under the Geneva Convention on Refugees, asylum seekers must prove that they are persecuted based on race, religion, political beliefs or membership in a social or political group. Of course, these are the very things that will be used to turn many people away in Europe and North America. "They have to prove that their fear of persecution is real and demonstrate the 'why' and 'how'," says Kurdish Rights Watch's Karadaghi. "That is difficult since most refugees flee their countries with only the clothes on their back and nothing to demonstrate that they fled for a reason."
The US is continuing to process asylum applications, but has temporarily suspended refugee resettlement from overseas, due to "security concerns". Though the State Department has indicated that it is a temporary measure, refugee advocates are worried that the lull will settle into permanence.
"In the asylum context, we are worried that the Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS] will err on the side of detaining newly arriving asylum seekers pending adjudication of their refugee claims," WCRWC's Young told the Weekly. Even before 11 September, she says, the INS often detained such individuals. "In fact, the INS runs the fastest growing prison programme in the US, detaining approximately 21,000 people a day, at least 5 per cent of whom are asylum seekers. As yet, we do not have a concrete data indicating that the fear of terrorism has led to more detention -- beyond those individuals picked up in conjunction with the FBI investigation into the attack -- but it is a situation that we will be closely monitoring."
"To me, the most significant factor as a refugee lawyer is that the West is actually thinking about the refugee problem before creating it," offers refugee lawyer Charles James. "Normally we sell weapons, support corrupt dictators, bomb places and then are surprised when refugees are created. This time the potential for refugees from Afghanistan has been noted and some preparation and prevention has been attempted."
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