The Politics of Protection: National Origin and the Architecture of Humanitarian Legal Inclusion

• In Event: International Migration Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 19. Immigrant organizations

Abstract

Having fled the violent conditions of war, persecution, political turmoil, civil unrest, and/or natural disaster, displaced migrants seek international protections and are often in a state of limbo awaiting determination of their legal status. As governments sift through thousands of applicants, the formal categorization of migrants serves to stratify their access to resources
according to perceived deservingness of national protection. The current study interrogates the US refugee and asylum application process as an equitable institution that extends protections for involuntary and forcibly displaced migrants. It utilizes two historically vulnerable populations that have been eligible for humanitarian protections, Afghans and Salvadorans, and places them under a lens of selective legal inclusion and illegality. Using the Yearbook of Immigration Statistics published by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), I calculated an application approval rate for refugee and asylum status by the respective country of origin. However, the discontinuation of publicly available application data in recent years constitutes a significant reporting gap, raising questions about transparency in the adjudication process. A pending records request seeks to obtain the missing data; in the interim, I found that the US government consistently approved applicants from Afghanistan at a higher rate than applicants from El Salvador between the years of 1982 through 2004. By consistently approving one group in comparison to another, the US is differentially incorporating national-origin groups into their understandings of lawful membership. Conversely, the restraint of more secure forms of documentation renders other vulnerable groups ‘illegal’ or ‘unworthy’ for seeking protections. ‘Illegality,’ thus becomes the outcome of application denials. I also propose that the US government may leverage refugee and asylum documentation as a product of geopolitical interests. Understanding the historical relationship between the US and migrant-sending nations provides insight whether policy decisions shape contemporary patterns of exclusion in the allocation of legal protections and resources to refugees and asylees.

Author

• Shayda Ines Hami, University of California-Riverside