From Persecution to Prison - Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of ...

Another reform was the establishment of the Asylum Corps in 1990, aprofessional group of asylum officers with special training in internationalhuman rights conditions and refugee and human rights law. However,changes such as the ABC settlement quickly led to an increase in asylumapplications that exceeded the volume of cases the corps of asylum officerswas expected to handle. 41Meanwhile, several high-profile crimes by asylum seekers contributedto a growing backlash against asylum seekers and other immigrants. In1993, a foreign gunman, an asylum seeker, killed two CIA agents outsideits Virginia offices. The same year, in the first terrorist attack in New YorkCity, another asylum seeker was implicated in a car bomb explosionbeneath the World Trade Center. 42 Other events stressed the immigrationsystem. In 1993, a boat carrying about 300 Chinese migrants ran agroundoff Long Island. 43 In 1994, masses of Cubans and Haitians again fled theircountries by boat, leading to interception at sea of about 32,000 Cubansand 12,000 Haitians. The US held them in “safe havens,” primarily at theUS Navy’s Guantanamo military base on the island of Cuba, while theirasylum applications and status were reviewed. 44In 1993, President Clinton ordered a major overhaul of the INS tospeed up the asylum process, reduce the backlog of cases, and discourageabuse of the system. This led to new regulations in 1995 that changed thequalifications for temporary work permits, denying them to aliens filingaffirmative asylum claims. 45From the mid-1990s, the US became less receptive to asylum seekers.Asylum applications filed with the INS had generally risen over the previoustwo decades, from fewer than 2,500 applications in 1975 to a peak inFY 1995 of 154,464. 46 However, since the 1995 regulatory reforms andpassage of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration ResponsibilityAct, asylum applications dropped, falling to 55,428 in 1998, 47 and49,462 in FY 2000. 48 People who enter the US and then some time later41Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, Is This America? The Denial of Due Process toAsylum Seekers in the United States, Oct. 2000, Sec.I,B [LCHR, Is This America]42Gregg Beyer, Striking a Balance: The 1995 Asylum Reforms “A Walk Down AnotherStreet”, p.10.43Historical Perspectives, p.1244Schwartz, E Practicing at Home What We Preach Abroad: Lessons on Refugee Policy fromthe Clinton Administration, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Winter/Spring2002, p. 15-17, available at http://cfdev.georgetown.edu/publications/journal/ws02%20Refugees/ws02forum, accessed June 9, 2003.45LCHR, Is This America?, p. 1446Beyer, Gregg A. “Reforming Affirmative Asylum Processing in the United States: Challengesand Opportunity” The American U. J. of Int’l Law and Policy vol. 9, No.4 Nov. 1994,p.43-78; also INS 1998, Table 2747INS 1998, chart G at p. 89.BACKGROUND 29