Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Responses of Industrial Countries to Asylum-Seekers

1994; Columbia University; Volume: 47; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

0022-197X

Charles B. Keely, Sharon Stanton Russell,

Migration, Health and Trauma

Since the mid-1980s, governments of industrial countries have viewed burgeoning requests for political asylum with increasing skepticism, and their representatives have met in many forums to discuss ways to control the flow of asylum-seekers. Increasingly, they have stressed the security dimensions of what have been viewed as primarily humanitarian issues. Furthermore, states have entered into regional-level discussions about initiatives to achieve the objectives of controlled and orderly movement. Their discussions, which raise fundamental issues about the effects of migration on states and societies in Europe and North America, pose a challenge to the role of multilateral agencies like the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with their more global perspectives and narrow mandates. This article examines industrial states' recent exchanges and probable future policies in response to growing numbers of asylum applications during the last decade. In Europe, North America and Australia, applications for asylum rose from 90,444 in 1983 to about 825,000 in 1992.(1) Over three million applications have been made in Europe since 1983.(2) The applicants came uninvited and unscreened. Governments' skepticism about claims of political persecution was reflected in the fact that in 1991, a typical year, the acceptance rate for asylum applicants in Europe was 5 percent.(3) Western European governments estimated that 70 percent of the 420,000 applicants in 1990 arrived without documents, many from countries that routinely issue them.(4) Nevertheless, governments permitted many of the more than one million applicants rejected over the last decade to stay under ad hoc temporary statuses, such as leave to stay for humanitarian reasons.(5) The level of asylum applications made heavy demands on the asylum adjudication systems, which had large backlogs of unresolved cases. States viewed this situation as an invitation to those seeking a way to penetrate industrial countries' labor markets. Care and maintenance of applicants and their families during the adjudication process siphoned off government funds and tested tolerance. At the same time, governments, as well as human rights groups and sentiment in many countries, emphasized that, despite the pressures and even possible abuse of asylum procedures, asylum itself must be maintained, and persecuted people ought not to be sacrificed to public order. DEMANDS ON ASYLUM SYSTEMS In the mid-1980s, European states grew concerned about the growing number of asylum applications, the risk of terrorism and the use of Warsaw Pact states as a transit corridor for third world asylum-seekers to harass Western European states vulnerable because of their asylum systems. Applications continued to rise as communist governments unravelled in East Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Instability in these regions was a growing concern for Western Europe. In North America, the migration picture had some similar dimensions. Canada was shaken by the arrival of a freighter from Germany with Sri Lankan asylum-seekers. Central Americans, Haitians and Cubans sought asylum in the United States. As the numbers continued to increase, asylum, illegal migration, the remnants of guest worker programs and the fear of even greater asylum demands following the breakup of the Soviet Union all made migration a politically sensitive issue in Europe. Anti-immigrant political parties gained strength. Anti-foreigner incidents increased and provoked controversy.(6) Questions were raised about Europe's capacity to absorb refugees and the wisdom of even trying to incorporate culturally very different people into ethnically based societies. Chancellor Helmut Kohl declared that Germany was not a country of immigration. French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua told Parliament: France was once a country of immigration, but it no longer wants to be one ... [T]he goal we have set is zero immigration. …