Norman L. Zucker
Published: 1987
Total Pages: 376
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This study details the design and operation of the two major gates (overseas processing and asylum) through which people in need of international protection may secure entry to the Unites States. It deals with asylum issues and with the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) both in resettling refugees into their new communities and in offering sanctuary to the 'unprotected'. The authors have also conducted an investigation of the reality of American refugee policy. According to them policy questions are: who gets in? why? and how? The answer requires an understanding of the various factors which determine a superpower's humanitarian policies, and of the multiple actors who, in a democracy, oppose or unite their forces to advance, rebut or alter those policies. The authors prove their point by researching, as far back as 1790 and to such recent developments as the Indochinese Refugee Resettlement and Protection bill of 1987, the US record of admitting victims of persecution or oppression through overseas processing, and of confronting mass influxes of spontaneous arrivals. In this framework they debate the inter-relationships between the foreign policy of the United States and the criteria for admitting refugees.