Asylum

Article 14 right to asylum

the number of displaced people in the world exceeds 68 million. Of that total, 25 million are refugees who have crossed an international border – people fleeing conflict or persecution – while 40 million are displaced within their own country. The rest are asylum seekers – people who may or may not decide to become refugees.

Millions of people have received life-saving protection as refugees, have been able to rebuild their lives and often have been able to return home once the danger has passed, all under the protection of Article 14, further developed in the Convention on the Refugee Statute of 1951.

In recent years, cross-border movement, including that of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, has become a highly controversial issue around the world. In order to exercise the right established in article 14, people have to enter another country, and today countries all over the world are closing the doors, preventing the entry of refugees and other immigrants with barbed wire fences, walls and armies.

Countries have the right to control their borders. However, as the UN has pointed out for years, an orderly migration system based on the human rights principles enshrined in the UDHR would not only address the legitimate security concerns of countries, but would also respect the rights that belong to both refugees as well as migrants. In 2016, the 193 member states of the United Nations unanimously adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants in order to protect those who are forced to flee and support the countries that host them. This paved the way for the adoption of two new global compacts in 2018: a global compact on refugees and a global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration.

The Global Compact for Migration calls on countries to “cooperate to identify, develop and strengthen solutions for migrants forced to leave their countries of origin due to slow-onset natural disasters, the adverse effects of climate change and environmental degradation.” For those people who cannot return to their country of origin, the solutions provided for in the Compact include planned relocations and new visa options. race, religion, nationality or membership in a particular social group.

You can only apply if you are physically present in the United States and are not a US citizen.

If you are eligible for asylum, you may be allowed to remain in the United States. To apply for affirmative asylum or asylum defense, within one year from the date of your arrival in the United States, you may include in your affirmative asylum application or asylum defense your spouse and children who are in the United States. at the time of filing or at any timebefore a final decision is made on your case. To include your child on your application, your child must be under 21 years of age.

With the coronavirus pandemic produced a new wave of arrivals of people determined to seek asylum. In Tijuana, a registry of requests through the internet managed by the organization reached 50,000 registrations. Waiting lists were widely used under the Trump administration to deal with an increase in the number of migrants from Mexico and Central America, often in large caravans, starting in 2018. Circumstances have changed now, but the process is still confusing. Migrants often do not know where to register or whether the lists really exist.

New chaotic episodes emerged as a surge in crossings became a constant alarm for Biden, accused by Republicans of not doing enough to stop them. In his meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Washington, Biden said the challenges ahead were made evident by the deaths of 53 migrants in a truck that was abandoned in San Antonio in sweltering heat.

Customs and Border Protection began receiving 70 asylum applications a day in San Diego in late April, half of them being screened.

The Biden administration says it prioritizes the “most vulnerable,” a term that would include LGBTQ migrants and those with health problems or facing imminent physical danger in Mexico. The selection criteria, however, is ambiguous and a mystery to many.

Pursuant to Article 1 of the American Convention on Human Rights, States have the obligation to prevent, investigate, and punish any violation of the rights recognized by the Convention. The IACHR has already stated that the normative evolution of public international law has consolidated universal jurisdiction, by virtue of which, when the organs of the national criminal jurisdiction are unwilling or unable to fulfill the function of investigating and punishing said international crimes, Any State has the authority to “prosecute, prosecute, and punish those who appeared to be responsible for said international crimes, even those that occurred outside its territorial jurisdiction or that do not comply with the nationality of the accused or the victims, since such crimes lead to the entire humanity and violate the public order of the world community.

The Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture, and the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, expressly provide that the States party to said Conventions must take the necessary measures to establish their jurisdiction over the crimes provided for in said instruments, when the alleged offender is within the scope of its jurisdiction, and its extradition is not appropriate. In accordance with the foregoing considerations, the Inter-American Commission must point out that granting such protection to persons who leave their country to avoid the determination of their responsibility as material or intellectual authors of international crimes constitutes a total distortion of the institution of asylum. The institution of asylum assumes that the person requesting protection is persecuted in his State of origin, and not that he is supported by it in his request.