OneWorld.net (U.S.)

SAN FRANCISCO, Sep 22 (OneWorld) - The number of people making asylum claims in the United States, Japan, Australia, and Europe continues to decline, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reported this week, but that doesn't mean fewer people are fleeing their homes as refugees.

"This can be attributed to a large extent to the introduction of more restrictive asylum policies across the continent (of Europe), as well as to improved conditions in some of the main countries of origin of asylum seekers," UNHCR chief spokesman Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva.

According the UN body, asylum applications have reached their lowest level since 1987, as 134,900 were filed in the first six months of 2006. The drop has been most pronounced in Europe, which saw a 20 percent decline in applications.

In the last year, political leaders across Europe have implemented policies intended to cut down on the number of asylum seekers. In Great Britain, for example, the government has begun issuing special identification cards for asylum seekers and forcing most applicants to wear an electronic bracelet on their ankle or wrist.

The UNHCR also reported an 11 percent reduction in asylum applications in the United States.

"Since September 11th, it's become much more difficult for people to get here in order to seek asylum," said Eleanor Acer, director of the Refugee Protection Program at New York-based Human Rights First.

Acer cites a report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan organization created by Congress in 1998, which found that asylum seekers are often treated like criminals by airport inspectors.

Since the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, refugees also have been subject to "expedited removal," which means they can be summarily sent back to their country of origin if a single airport inspector deems their asylum claim lacks merit. The Commission found that since 9/11, airport inspectors have often ordered refugees to be strip-searched, shackled, and detained indefinitely in inhumane, jail-like conditions without any hope of seeing a lawyer.

Those who get past the airport, Acer said, face immigration judges who are increasingly skeptical of asylum seekers.

"Asylum adjudicators have been requiring information that someone fleeing from violence won't have," Acer told OneWorld. "Someone who fled a village in Darfur that's been burned to the ground is not going to be able to document the burning of her home. She can't ask for a note from her oppressors substantiating it."

A final difficulty for refugees seeking asylum in the United States, Acer argued, is the Real ID act signed last year by President George W. Bush.

Originally attached to a bill providing relief to the victims of the 2004 tsunami, the Real ID act allows an immigration judge to deny asylum to a refugee based on a lack of eye contact, for example, or because she shows too little emotion. It allows immigration judges to deny protection in the United States to a woman who was raped by soldiers if she is unable to tell armed male airport inspectors about the rape, but later tells the judge.

The Real ID Act also allows people who bear no personal responsibility for terrorist acts--even the wives and children of victims of extortion by militant groups--to be deported and barred from asylum based what Human Rights First contends are overly broad definitions of "terrorism" and of what constitutes "supporting terrorism."

"It's a cultural thing," Acer adds. "Some people have a knee-jerk reaction now after the attacks. It's a culture of 'no' broadly across the immigration process--not only for asylum."

The main countries of origin of asylum applicants in 2006 were China (8,800) followed by Iraq (8,500), Serbia and Montenegro (8,000), the Russian Federation (6,900), and Turkey (4,600).

Iraq was almost alone in recording a rise of asylum applications, recording a 25 percent increase over the previous six months and up almost 50 percent over the same period a year ago.

Still, the number of asylum applications from Iraqis pales in comparison to the number who have had to flee their country in response to rising violence there. An estimated 500,000 Iraqis have gone to Jordan and more than 1 million have fled to Syria over the last three years.

Many now live in those countries illegally, with little possibility of winning an asylum claim in the U.S. or Europe.