UN Refugee Agency Tries to Step on U.S. National Sovereignty

1. Secondly, there is no language in the 1967 Protocol that would preclude a country's sovereign right to establish official ports of entry as the only locations where asylum seekers are permitted to enter the country legally in order to apply for asylum. UNHCR is effectively adding its own interpretive gloss that contradicts Article 2 of the original 1951 Refugee Convention.
2. The 1951 Refugee Convention defines refugee” as a person with a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country… UNHCR has failed to say who it believes is responsible for the persecution it alleges has caused so many people to flee Central America, nor how such alleged persecution fits within the categories specified by the 1951 Refugee Convention.
3. Article 2 states that “Every refugee has duties to the country in which he finds himself, which require in particular that he conform to its laws and regulations as well as to measures taken for the maintenance of public order.” The 1967 Protocol keeps this Article 2 of the Convention in effect. It is the asylum-seekers outside of their own home countries who must conform to the laws and regulation and measures for the maintenance of public order of their destination countries, not the other way around.
4. UNHCR has no business telling sovereign member states of the United Nations what it “expects” their laws, regulations and decrees to say in order to be consistent with UNHCR’s interpretation of the 1951 Refugee Convention or the 1967 Protocol.
5. “UNHCR expects all countries, including the United States, to make sure any person in need of refugee protection and humanitarian assistance is able to receive both promptly and without obstruction, in accordance with the 1967 refugee Protocol [relating to the Status of Refugees] to which the United States is a party, the UN refugee agency declared in its statement.
6. Moreover, the UN refugee agency has not pointed to any provision of the 1951 Refugee Convention or the 1967 Protocol stating that fleeing life-threatening violence of any sort and from any source or severe poverty entitles one to asylum status.
7. Instead, it has spun its own unaccountable interpretation of what it “expects” sovereign states to do, ignoring the real facts on the ground and the plain text of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol that it is supposed to help administer.

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