Word: asylum
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...native Iraq to the U.S. was long and convoluted: with her husband and young son, she fled first to Jordan, then Turkey, Argentina and Ecuador. Everywhere they went, inhospitable immigration rules prevented them from even trying to put down roots. It wasn't until they were finally granted asylum in the U.S. last year that the Aljanabys could finally unpack their lives and settle down...
...action would do little to deter desperate people from making the hazardous journey across Europe, and instead blamed French officials for failing to deal with them. "The French government has effectively washed its hands of the problem and deliberately held back from bringing these people into the French asylum system in the hope that they will make it to Britain," says Dan Hodges, director of Refugee Action, a London-based charity. "This is a grotesque game of human pass-the-parcel." (See pictures of the French crackdown at the Jungle...
...cousin, also 12, to Europe, after Taliban fighters had repeatedly tried to press the boys into fighting with them. French Immigration Minister Eric Besson said on Tuesday that the 132 children arrested would be housed in special immigration youth centers until officials determined whether they qualified for asylum. In the camp on Monday Jabar described how he and his cousin hid in container trucks for six weeks across Turkey, Greece, Italy and France, before arriving in Calais in early August. "I am very afraid that the French police will send me back," he said, adding, "I am less afraid...
...still hiding under bridges, in abandoned buildings or in the woods elsewhere on the French coast. Under European law, refugees are required to settle in the first E.U. country in which they land. For the thousands fleeing Afghanistan and Iraq, that usually means Greece, where the government grants asylum to only about 1% of refugees. "There are huge, huge differences between countries in the chance of being recognized as a refugee," says Wilbert van Hövell, regional representative in Brussels for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has urged European governments to be flexible when implementing asylum...
...rumors of the crackdown spread throughout Calais on Monday, Mohammadullah Safi, an Afghan interpreter for the UNHCR, explained to immigrants how to apply for asylum in France. Safi - himself a refugee who failed to cross into Britain in 2002 - believes that thousands more Afghans will still try to make it to Britain, while thousands more will dodge police as they travel across Europe, hoping to make new lives there. No riot police can stop that, he says. "Change things in Afghanistan, and things will change here," Safi says. Until then, Europe's politicians will continue their bitter arguments over illegal...