It would be unconscionable if cases that should have been approved got rejected due to oversight. I fear this person ’s statement could be used some day as grounds for justifying deportation of those who did not meet all the “requirements” on paper.Īnd with regards to the six cases, did the counselor mean that only these six cases passed the examination, or that officials could find no more than six cases worth examining out of 2,000? One counselor has stated, “Out of a total of 2,000 cases we examined, there were only six where we were able to determine with confidence that the applicants should be granted refugee status.” In the screening of applications, refugee examination counselors, of whom there are 111, wield considerable influence. I wonder if this system is anywhere close to meeting the international standard of “when in doubt, rule in favor of the applicant.” The new system enables the government to deport applicants while their requests are still being processed. Of the many issues that have been pointed out about the revised law, the one that causes me the greatest concern is whether Japan ’s system of determining refugee status is functioning properly. Japan on June 9 passed into law a revision to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law. I just hope all applicants will be granted asylum, except in cases that leave absolutely no doubt that they were fraudulent.” One major headache for front-line rescue personnel was Italy ’s vexingly complicated application procedure for refugee status.Īt the time, Italy had just enacted a law to toughen its immigration policy, and everyone was still struggling with the confusion brought about by the new legislation.īut one senior official said: “Be it poverty or political oppression, each refugee has their own reason for fleeing their country. One rescue official, referring to their plight, explained that no new arrivals are asked if they were asylum seekers or economically motivated migrants. Two decades ago, at the height of a growing refugee crisis, I visited the small Mediterranean island of Lampedusa in southern Italy to report on the boatloads of migrants and asylum seekers from North Africa washing ashore there.Įvery local rescue authority official I interviewed was uniformly sympathetic to the arrivals who had risked their lives crossing the sea.
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