I submit this excerpt from a paper on the UN refugee conventions in the hope that we as a community will become as educated as we can about what our laws are with respect to refugees seeking asylum.

Refugee status and immigration are very different things, and much of the immigration that is adding to the worldwide refugee crisis is caused by dictatorship and also by climate change. These are issues Donald Trump is suddenly causing us to wake up about, and, as some of us sensed about his candidacy, that could be a good thing.

The United States is a signatory to the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees. I have added bold type to some of the excerpts:

http://legal.un.org/avl/ha/prsr/prsr.html

Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, Geneva, 28 July 1951
Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, New York, 31 January 1967
By Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, Senior Research Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford

… Persecution and the Reasons for Persecution

Although the risk of persecution is central to the refugee definition, “persecution” itself is not defined in the 1951 Convention. Articles 31 and 33 refer to those whose life or freedom “was” or “would be” threatened, so clearly it includes the threat of death, or the threat of torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. A comprehensive analysis today will require the general notion to be related to developments within the broad field of human rights (cf. 1984 Convention against Torture, article 7; 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, article 3; 1950 European Convention on Human Rights, article 6; 1969 American Convention on Human Rights, article 5; 1981 African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights).

... A Convention refugee, by definition, must be unable or unwilling to avail him- or herself of the protection of the State or Government, and the notion of inability to secure the protection of the State is broad enough to include a situation where the authorities cannot or will not provide protection, for example, against the persecution of non-State actors.

The Convention requires that the persecution feared be for reasons of “race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group (added at the 1951 Conference), or political opinion”. This language, which recalls the language of non-discrimination in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent human rights instruments, gives an insight into the characteristics of individuals and groups which are considered relevant to refugee protection. Persecution for the stated reasons implies a violation of human rights of particular gravity; it may be the result of cumulative events or systemic mistreatment, but equally it could comprise a single act of torture.

… the Convention definition categorically excludes from the benefits of refugee status anyone whom there are serious reasons to believe has committed a war crime, a serious non-political offence prior to admission, or acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations (article 1F). From the very beginning, therefore, the 1951 Convention has contained clauses sufficient to ensure that the serious criminal and the terrorist do not benefit from international protection.

Non-refoulement

Besides identifying the essential characteristics of the refugee, States party to the Convention also accept a number of specific obligations which are crucial to achieving the goal of protection, and thereafter an appropriate solution.

Foremost among these is the principle of non-refoulement. As set out in the Convention, this prescribes broadly that no refugee should be returned in any manner whatsoever to any country where he or she would be at risk of persecution…

… The 1951 Conference of Plenipotentiaries qualified the principle, however, by adding a paragraph to deny the benefit of non-refoulement to the refugee whom there are “reasonable grounds for regarding as a danger to the security of the country..., or who, having been convicted by a final judgment of a particularly serious crime, constitutes a danger to the community of that country.” Apart from such limited situations of exception, however, the drafters of the 1951 Convention made it clear that refugees should not be returned, either to their country of origin or to other countries in which they would be at risk...