Refugees and Asylum Seekers Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Refugees and Asylum Seekers - Research Paper Example The situations that makes it impossible for a refugee to return to his home country must relate to something that makes it unsafe, dangerous or fatal for the individual to return to his home country. There are two facades to examine these situations that puts a person in danger. One angle is to view it from an individual perspective, where an individual, due to some activities or inherent situations is subjected to possible death, torture or inhumane conditions. On the other hand, a person might qualify to become a refugee if there is a situation that has been declared by the international community as a war or internal conflict. Chimni (2000) identifies that widest root cause of the exodus of refugees is ethnic reasons. This implies that people are more likely to become refugees because of persecution related to their ethnic views and identities. Chimni (2000) identifies two reasons for this. The first reason is that ethnic differences are susceptible to exploitation. Secondly, the control of a state by one ethnic group is likely to lead to threats to the lives of people of other ethnic origins. This definition of the term 'refugee' is consistent with Article 1 of the 1951 UN Geneva Convention. (Carlier, 1997). This UN statute makes it imperative for nations to take in persons who fall into the category of refugees to be given the status of refugee, which makes them entitled to some degree of help, support and rights in the host country (Carlier, 1997). Normally, a person who has a genuine fear in his home country moves into another country and applies for an asylum (Chimni, 2000). The asylum seeking process allows a potential refugee to present the reasons why he is fleeing form his home country. It is up to the authorities in the host country to assess the application and grant or refuse the application on several grounds. In most developed countries the reasons for seeking asylum is segmented to seven categories and each category has its own rules and proce sses (Hynes, 2011). Thus each application has to be put into one of the seven categories. When this is done, the relevant rules would be invoked based on the facts presented by the applicant. If the application is consistent with the rules for the specific category the application goes through, the asylum would be granted. And when this is done, a person's status is upgraded from asylum seeker to refugee. In this instance, the person is given basic necessities in life and allowed to live and work in the host country (Hynes, 2011). Technically, when an asylum seeker is granted refugee status, he cannot be deported back to his country of origin either until the person voluntarily goes back to the country or the situation in the country is declared over and there is no threat to the life of the individual in question. In some cases, an asylum application could be rejected on one of several grounds including abusive or unfounded (Hynes, 2011). An unfounded application is an application made by a person whose claim for asylum does not have a basis. An example is the case of a person who claims to be at risk in his home country because of a human rights situation that his country has guaranteed against. Such an application would be declined by most countries because it does not seem there is a real threat. The second form of rejection is where an asylum claim is defined as a means to a given end other than escape from a dangerous situation in a person's home country. A common