Every year, thousands of foreign nationals seek asylum in the United States because they fear persecution in their home country. Some say they fear rape and torture. Others fear imprisonment. Many petitioners describe their application as a matter of life and death.
Question: What is asylum?
Answer: Asylum is a form of protection that allows foreign nationals to remain in the United States if they can prove it would be dangerous for them to return to their home country.
Last week, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that the family of a disabled Russian child was eligible for political asylum because he was persecuted in his homeland in connection with his condition.
Q: Who is eligible to seek asylum?
A: Applicants for asylum must prove a well-founded fear of persecution by their home government or agents of the state on account of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
Grounds for asylum might also exist if the authorities in an applicant's country are unable or unwilling to provide protection when the persecution is by nongovernmental persons.
People who have participated in the persecution of others, or who have engaged in acts of terrorism, are barred from seeking asylum in the United States.
Q: How does the process work?
A: There are two main ways of obtaining asylum in the United States, according to officials at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: the "affirmative" process and the "defensive" process.
The distinction is important.
Asylum-seekers who are already physically in the United States, and who have not been ordered deported, can submit an asylum application to the government, regardless of how they came to the country and regardless of their immigration status. They must apply within one year of entering the country, unless they can prove that extraordinary circumstances prevented them from doing so. This is the affirmative process.
Applicants are typically interviewed at one of the country's eight asylum offices, two of which are in Anaheim and San Francisco.
The defensive process is used by people who request asylum after a U.S. court has deemed them eligible for removal from the country. In such cases, immigration judges, who serve at the discretion of the U.S. attorney general, determine whether the applicants are eligible for asylum. If the application fails, petitioners are either ordered deported or allowed to leave on their own.
