Tighter Borders Worldwide Make Political Asylum an Elusive Goal

Of all the migrants straggling over the mountains and across the river from Guatemala into Mexico, few can claim to have come as far or suffered as much as Hussein Karim.

In a Roman Catholic shelter near Mexico’s southern border, Karim tells a story that takes him across three continents--and that this month earned him political asylum in Mexico.

Karim’s tale reflects the intertwined routes followed by migrants leaving home for economic reasons and refugees fearing political persecution. Although aimed mainly at blocking economic migrants, a worldwide tightening of borders over the past two decades also has made it more difficult for asylum-seekers to make it safely to a new life.

Karim, 29, says he left his native Sudan in 1999 after his wife and young son were slain in the African nation’s brutal civil war.

He says he had been forced to join southern Sudan’s rebel army. He deserted from his unit and returned to his hometown, only to find that his family had been killed by the same rebel force that had dragooned him. He fled into exile, and trudged for four months across the desert to Cairo.

He decided early on that he wanted to get to the United States. So, a year after arriving in the Egyptian capital, he started out, making his way to Bucharest, Romania, and then trekking across Western Europe to Madrid.

Finally, three months ago, the former bank employee flew over the Atlantic to Honduras, traveling with nothing but a small bag. From there, he crossed Guatemala along with some of the tens of thousands of Central American migrants who head each year for the Mexican border and onward to the United States.

Karim says he joined other migrants in fording the Suchiate River to Mexico on a jury-rigged raft, a regular if technically illegal ferry service that operates within sight of the official border crossing. Although he speaks almost no Spanish, he made his way to a migrant home run by Father Flor Maria Rigoni, an Italian-born missionary who has worked with migrants in Mexico for 17 years.

Although he would have liked to go on to the United States, Karim risked deportation if he was caught crossing through Mexico illegally. Fearing that he would be returned to Sudan, he decided to contact the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and request asylum.

The 50-year-old Geneva Convention on Refugees provides five grounds for claiming refugee status. Applicants must prove a well-grounded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group or political beliefs.

The convention excludes economic distress as a reason for being granted refugee status or asylum in another country. Therefore, Central American and Mexican migrants seeking opportunities in the U.S. have no recourse to refugee status.

But several hundred foreigners from other countries who make their way to Mexico along the same route each year do apply for refugee status. And after intensive interviews and research, about one-third are recognized as refugees.

Karim contacted the U.N. refugee agency office in Comitan, a town in eastern Chiapas state, which handles refugee issues on Mexico’s southern border. Office chief Ana Ferreiro says a U.N. staff member traveled to Tapachula immediately for a first interview with Karim.

Ferreiro says two key issues are investigated in such cases. The first is whether the applicant’s story is credible. The second is whether the alleged persecution has been known to occur in his or her native country.

Ferreiro, who is Spanish, notes that Mexico “is one of the most generous countries of refuge in the world. The Mexican authorities are an example for all of Latin America and the world in terms of respect for refugees.”

In the 1980s, Mexico provided sanctuary for tens of thousands of refugees from Guatemala fleeing the neighboring country’s civil war. Of those, about 45,000 have been repatriated since a peace deal was signed in 1996, and about 25,000 remain in Mexico, many of them now permanent residents.

Ferreiro says would-be refugees cross Mexico’s southern border from all over the world because its unguarded jungles and mountains are easy to disappear into. She notes that three Iraqis being held in the Mexican immigration service detention center in Tapachula also are seeking asylum. During the application process, they are not subject to deportation.

Diana Goldberg, spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency regional office in Mexico City, says the number of asylum-seekers in Mexico has risen steadily since 1997, when there were 99 applicants. In the first six months of this year, 191 applied.

Of the 277 applicants last year, 79 were granted refugee status, including 19 women. That approval ratio stays relatively consistent each year, Goldberg says.

An “eligibility committee” of refugee agency officials from the U.N. meets every Friday to rule on cases. Even though it has long respected refugee rights, Mexico only last year became a signatory to the refugee convention. The government has not yet established a governmental eligibility committee to decide on applications, such as the panels that exist in most other countries, although that is expected to happen soon. In the absence of a government panel, Mexico relies on the refugee agency staff to assess applications.

Goldberg says the tightening of national borders by developed countries to control illegal economic migrants has affected prospective asylum-seekers, who often arrive in the flow of general migrants. She says the refugee agency works hard to persuade governments to make sure that would-be refugees have a chance to state their cases and are not just summarily deported.

The U.N. refugee agency offices in Mexico works with migration officials and migrant support groups to make sure the refugees’ rights are respected. For example, the refugee convention says it is not a crime for asylum-seekers to enter a country using false papers because that may have been the only way for them to escape persecution in their own countries.

Those whose applications are approved receive a residence visa in Mexico. The nongovernmental organization Sin Fronteras (Without Borders) helps refugees find housing and learn Spanish.

Human rights groups say that more than 2 million people have been killed since Sudan’s civil war reignited in 1983, and several hundred thousand Sudanese are living as refugees in countries neighboring Sudan.

Karim says he was imprisoned in the past in Sudan, and he has a letter from Sudan’s opposition Umma Party, issued by the Cairo office in January, saying: “We have information that his life will be at risk if he is returned.”

He also carries faded photocopies of the birth certificates of his wife and son, and photos of the rebel army he served in until he deserted.

“I am at risk now if I am forced to go back,” he says.

“I believe that in the United States, human life has value.”