asylum seeker
Sign in to saveAlso known as political refugee
individual who seeks refuge, esp. political asylum, in a foreign country
Key facts
- Venezuela
- 1,200,130
- Cuba
- 329,692
- Nicaragua
- 308,032
- Colombia
- 301,824
- Afghanistan
- 296,033
- Sudan
- 253,902
- Haiti
- 228,443
- Honduras
- 216,873
- Iraq
- 192,202
- Syria
- 182,954
- Somalia
- 179,224
- Guatemala
- 176,035
- Mexico
- 156,309
- Democratic republic of the congo
- 153,142
- India
- 142,607
- Ethiopia
- 139,424
- China
- 137,143
- El salvador
- 133,042
via Wikipedia infobox
~15 min read
Encyclopedic overview
An asylum seeker or asylum-seeker is a person who leaves their country of residence, enters another country, and makes in that other country a formal application for the right of asylum according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 14. A person keeps the status of asylum seeker until the right of asylum application has concluded.
The relevant immigration authorities of the country of asylum determine whether the asylum seeker will be granted the right of asylum protection or whether asylum will be refused and the asylum seeker becomes an illegal immigrant who may be asked to leave the country and may even be deported in line with non-refoulement. Signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights create their own policies for assessing the protection status of asylum seekers, and the proportion of asylum applicants who are accepted or rejected varies each year from country to country.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “asylum seeker” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.