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Americans know and are concerned that governments

around the world oppress their citizens.  We condemn the

persecution of Christians and other religious minorities in

Sudan, Cuba, China, Pakistan, North Korea, and countries

that were part of the Soviet Union.  We criticize the Peo-

ple's Republic of China's systematic repression of religious

practices and study by the Tibetan and Uigher peoples.  We

cringe when we see the suffering of women and children

refugees in Somalia and Rwanda, the mass graves in Bosnia,

and the persecution of the Kurds in Iraq.  We are outraged

by the Chinese government's silencing of the student democ-

racy movement in Tiananmen Square and the forced abortion

and sterilization of Chinese people who want more than one

child.  And we denounce the practice of genital mutilation

of young girls in Africa and the Middle East.  We see images

of human suffering on the evening news, read about the

horrors of human rights abuses daily in newspapers, and

wonder how all that could be happening and what we could do

to help.

Yet, despite our commitment to encouraging basic free-

doms of speech, political opinion, and religion, IIRIRA has

imposed restrictions on the ability of victims of such human

rights abuses to escape government-sanctioned oppression and

persecution and to seek refuge in the United States.

Refugee Protection and Asylum Law

The U.S. government offers protection to those fleeing

persecution under two basic sets of laws--refugee law and

asylum law.  Modern protection policies were incorporated

into international treaties following the Nazi persecution

of Jews during World War II.  Current U.S. asylum law de-

rives from two of those treaties, the 1951 United Nations

Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the con-

vention's 1967 protocol.  The convention and the protocol

recognize states' obligation to provide protection to refu-

gees--individuals who, "owing to a well-founded fear of

being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality,

membership in a particular social group or political opin-

ion," are outside the country of their nationality and are

"unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to avail them-

selves of the protection of their home countries.2  The

treaties' most basic requirement is commonly referred to as

nonrefoulment, the duty not to return a refugee to a country

in which his or her life will be threatened.