U.N. Official Decries U.S. Policies on Political Refugees

Once a haven for many foreigners fleeing persecution, the United States has erected so many barriers to potential refugees in recent years that its policies verge on a serious violation of international human rights standards, a senior U.N. official said Friday.

Dennis McNamara, director of the U.N. Division of International Protection, said Washington’s practices have become so restrictive that they are now regularly cited by other governments as precedent in turning away people escaping life-threatening oppression and ethnic violence.

McNamara, visiting Washington to urge immigration and State Department officials to relax U.S. asylum policies, told reporters that he is especially concerned about the detention without trial and the summary deportation of thousands of would-be refugees.

McNamara, a Geneva-based aide to the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, said the developments are especially troubling because the United States maintained a virtual open-door policy for people fleeing communism during the Cold War.

“Now there is no more communism to flee,” he said. “The ideological basis for refugee acceptance has gone.”

Although the United States continues to offer shelter to foreigners who can establish a “well-founded fear of persecution” in their home country, the rules determining which potential refugees meet that standard have become tougher.

McNamara said the United States continues to welcome many people who apply for asylum in overseas refugee camps, from which it can pick and choose individuals on a case-by-case basis. However, he said Washington affords harsh treatment to people who arrive undocumented at U.S. airports and border posts.

McNamara said the United States has long been a world leader in refugee policies.

For years, he said, the U.S. welcome extended to asylum-seekers was reflected in the procedures of other governments, especially developing countries in Africa and Asia that regularly accepted people fleeing conflicts in neighboring countries. Now, he said, Washington’s less hospitable policies are also being copied by other countries.

He said many developing nations once accepted large flows of refugees despite the damage that the migration caused to their hard-pressed economies. Many governments are now far less hospitable, he said.

“Those governments look at the American practices, and they quote it to us all the time,” he said. “The comparisons are not always fair, but they come all the time.”

McNamara said he is urging the Clinton administration to reverse three policies he considers “on a par” with the world’s most restrictive rules: administrative detention of asylum-seekers; summary deportation; and expulsion of refugees convicted of felonies, even crimes such as passing bad checks.

He said foreigners entering the United States without valid travel documents are regularly interned while their status is determined. In theory, he said, those who meet the test of a well-founded fear of persecution should be released, but they often are not.

Some asylum-seekers have been held for years, often in county jails, he said.