Birdsong's Law Blog

The following information will be of interest to Barry Law students in the Refugee and Aslym Law seminar.  It is an excerpt from Prof. Birdsong’s law review article: “Give Me Your Gays, Your Lesbians and Your Victims of Gender Violence Yearning to Breathe of Sexual Persecution…”: The New Grounds for Grants of Asylum, which was published in the Nova Law Review, Spring 2008.

Eligibility for Asylum

            Asylum is a legal remedy available to legal ands illegal aliens who seek protection from persecution they faced or would face in their home country on account of some protected ground.[1] Thus, not all immigrants are protected from persecution.[2]  Rather, the persecution must have a connection to protected characteristics. Specifically, those include race, religion, nationality, political opinion and membership in a “particular social group.”[3]  An asylum request is automatically considered an application for an alternate claim of relief know as withholding of removal.[4]  Both forms of relief require the claimant to demonstrate a certain quantum of persecution

This Post is for students in Prof. Birdsong’s Refugee Law Seminar.

CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment

The States Parties to this Convention,

Considering that, in accordance with the principles proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations, recognition of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,