Asylum seekers flee persecution and seek refuge in another country, historically seeking sanctuary in churches. The concept of asylum has a long history, with modern asylum seekers seeking protection from racial, religious, political or sexual persecution. The asylum process is politically sensitive and not guaranteed. Asylum standards for criminals have changed over time, with nations applying additional standards and sometimes refusing extradition. Asylum seekers are different from refugees, who are displaced for various reasons and handled as a group.
An asylum seeker is a person seeking refuge or refuge from persecution, usually at the hands of a government or its representatives. Asylum itself means sanctuary or protection. In modern times, an asylum seeker is generally someone who flees from one country to another to avoid racial, religious, political or even sexual persecution. Historically, asylum seekers were most commonly accused of criminals seeking refuge from law enforcement in and around churches.
The concept of asylum has a long history and was practiced in ancient Egypt, Greece and ancient Israel. Part of it has to do with the sovereignty of the nation to which the asylum seeker has fled; by assuming jurisdiction over the asylum seeker, the nation asserts its sovereignty. Conversely, the nation that automatically repatriates asylum seekers can be considered to recognize that the other nation’s claim is beyond its sovereignty. The concept was refined in medieval Europe, when churches were empowered by common law to offer shelter to fugitives. Churches generally required the ruler’s authority to offer sanctuary, and some were permitted to offer sanctuary only within their walls, while others were permitted to offer sanctuary over a larger geographical area.
Those who took refuge in the sanctuary of a church, however, did not receive absolute protection. Instead, they usually bought some time, perhaps a few weeks, during which they surrendered their arms to the church and placed themselves under church jurisdiction. At the end of this period, they would have made one of two choices: they could confess their guilt, hand over all their possessions variously to church and state and go into exile, or they could proclaim their innocence and stand trial.
In modern times, the kind of sanctuary that churches can offer is very limited, and in many countries it is recognized more as a courtesy than an absolute right. When fugitives seek refuge in a church today, the normal outcome is negotiation of the fugitive’s surrender, at which point law enforcement agencies are empowered to enter the church and capture the fugitive. One exception is the so-called “shrine movement” in the United States, where some churches and municipalities will shelter fugitives accused of illegal entry into the United States and will not facilitate their handover to federal authorities.
When people flee official persecution in a nation, they generally seek a nation that can reasonably be expected to offer them asylum based on their specific circumstances, often one of the Western democracies. Most countries have a formal application procedure that asylum seekers must follow upon arrival and cases are decided on a case-by-case basis. This process can be very politically sensitive and there is no guarantee that an asylum seeker will actually be granted asylum. However, in the second half of the 20th century, multinational treaties were established which establish a certain level of uniformity for the asylum process. Additionally, some nations have begun to include other grounds for granting asylum, such as persecution and sexual abuse.
Asylum standards for criminals, on the other hand, have changed over the years. Most nations participate in extradition treaties that provide for the repatriation of fugitive criminals; however, many nations apply additional standards. For example, some nations extradite fugitives only for crimes they themselves acknowledge; that is, if a nation does not recognize an act as a crime, it will refuse to extradite people within its jurisdiction to account for that crime to another nation. This may be a significant factor because some nations prosecute individuals for political and religious crimes, branding as criminals those who commit acts that in other nations are not crimes, such as apostasy, fornication, and political dissent. Similarly, if the crime is recognized by both nations as a felony, but the extraditing nation imposes a harsher punishment than would be imposed by the asylum nation, extradition could be refused.
There is sometimes confusion between asylum seekers and refugees. Refugees are large groups of people who are displaced from a region or nation for a wide variety of reasons, including war or other internal turmoil, natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes or tsunamis, and even economic circumstances. Unlike asylum seekers, who are fleeing persecution and whose cases are decided individually, refugees are handled as a group and individual applicants only need to verify that they meet the qualifications to be included in the group.
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