Asylum Archives - Public Seminar

Podcast

What of the “Homeless, Tempest Tost”?

Episode 6

May 30, 2025 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Hiroshi Motomura and Cristina M Rodríguez

This week, our hosts explore the closing of the US refugee resettlement program, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and the asylum process. Our guest speaker is Mark Hetfield, President of HIAS.

Migration

The Violence of American Border Policies Continues

Both political parties say they care about families—so why would the Biden administration return to a family separation regime?

April 19, 2023 • by Rachel Ida Buff

And yet, in the absence of new legislation that makes it easier to cross the border legally for work, the Biden administration has defaulted to a hard line on immigration that continues to separate families and promote border security. ...

The Violence of American Border Policies Continues

Migration

Remote Control of Asylum Seekers

How States Evade their Protection Obligation

December 17, 2019 • by David Scott FitzGerald

Zolberg observed that regulating migration at the port of embarkation abroad “is now so familiar that we tend to underestimate its radically innovative character and its fundamental importance in regulating world-wide movement.” In Refuge Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers, I show how modern remote control has become a ...

Migration

Grassroots Asylum

Escaping the Statist Paradigm

December 17, 2019 • by Simon Behrman

Because the asylum framework is constructed upon such subjective criteria, and is administered by states themselves, the decisions about who receives protection are stuck within a statist paradigm. Asylum is conceived of as a gift of the state, over which the state has discretion in how requests are considered. And ...

From the Editors

As We Contemplate Change

We look at what’s possible, who makes it possible, and how people move policy

November 20, 2019 • by Claire Potter

So let’s start with how change happens. Economist James K. Galbraith leads off our politics section this week with an analysis of Bernie Sanders’ economic platform: can Bernie do all these things? Read it and find out. Next, we turn to a reflection on activism, as Nick Estes interviews Native American ...

Migration

Trump’s War on Asylum

November 13, 2019 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

In the summer of 2019, the Administration put in place a policy that denies asylum to any person who has traveled through another country and failed to request asylum in the transit state. It has announced a reduction of refugee admissions to 18,000, a more than 80% cut from the ...

Migration

In the Shadow of Auschwitz

Reflections on America’s Asylum Policies in the Age of Trump

October 25, 2019 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

This odd combination of events sparked a number of thoughts which I offer now after further reflection. I will not enter into the discussion of whether the detention facilities to which children have been confined in the U.S. are or are not similar to concentration camps; nor am I arguing ...

Migration

Border Crisis?

How American Policies Have Produced a Generation of Refugees

March 26, 2019 • by Michelle Mayhew-Shears and Heather M. Salazar

On October 18, 2018 President Donald J. Trump continued his detrimental practice of using Twitter to fuel the already hot immigration debate. He said, in part, “I am watching the Democrat Party led (because they want Open Borders and existing weak laws) assault on our country by Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, ...

Feature

Tempest Tossed

Is the US a ‘safe country’ for asylum-seekers?: A conversation with Professor Sean Rehaag on new challenges to the US-Canada

October 24, 2018 • by T. Alexander Aleinikoff

Under an agreement signed in 2002, Canada can return asylum-seekers to the US if they have traveled through the US or lived there prior to arriving in Canada. Recent policies north and south of the US-Canadian border pose new challenges to the agreement, as Sean Rehaag, professor at Osgoode Hall ...

Feature

How You Can Help Immigrant Children Separated From Their Families

We need to take action against the U.S. government’s ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policy

June 28, 2018 • by Melanie Hart and Maya Wiley

We stand in support of a humane and equitable immigration path, policy, and process for all people. The federal government’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy promises to prosecute all persons who illegally cross the border, which includes individuals who seek asylum. Under the zero tolerance policy, thousands of children were forcibly ...

How You Can Help Immigrant Children Separated From Their Families

Feature

Finding Refuge

When Secure Borders Are Not the Answer

May 30, 2017 • by Anne McNevin and Klaus Neumann

As countries in the global North fortify their borders against irregular migrants from the global South, border walls proliferate. Argentina constructed a wall at its border with Paraguay. Hungary recently erected a second, electrified fence at its border with Serbia. And Donald Trump’s administration is still committed to building at ...