NEW YORK, NY -- November 30 -- Starting soon, asylum seekers, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and HIV-positive asylum seekers, will be barred from filing for asylum in Canada if they have traveled through the United States. Final regulations implementing a joint U.S.-Canadian Agreement will be published today and go into effect December 29, 2004. The agreement, known as the Safe-Third Country Agreement, requires asylum seekers and refugees to seek the protection of the first country they reach and denies them the ability to travel from the U.S. to Canada, or vice versa, to claim asylum.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, in a prepared statement said that the two countries shared a "mutual interest" in reconciling asylum policy. Secretary Ridge added, "the agreement ensures that all asylum seekers will be heard and that individuals will not be removed until Canada or the United States has made a protection determination."

The regulations however, have come under sharp criticism from both U.S. and Canadian advocates for immigrants' rights who fear that asylum seekers will be refused entry under the new agreement. "We fear that this agreement will deny legitimate asylum seekers the protection asylum laws were intended to provide," says Victoria Neilson, Legal Director of Immigration Equality. "We are especially concerned that for LGBT and HIV- positive asylum seekers who may not be aware that they are eligible to apply for asylum and therefore miss the one year filing deadline under U.S. law will never have an opportunity to obtain a fair hearing on their claims. For many LGBT asylum seekers, Canada has been the only option after missing the one year filing deadline in the U.S."

The Safe-Third Country Agreement has improved from initial regulations by including exemption provisions if the applicant has qualifying family members in the other country. The agreement also includes protections against chain deportations by guaranteeing that no applicant falling within the agreement would be deported to a third country until a final decision has been reached in the person's claim. Detentions, however, are likely to increase as these claims process through the legal system. Immigrant detainees are the largest growing incarcerated population in the U.S. and the number of detainees continues to rise.

Immigration Equality, founded in 1994 addresses the widespread discriminatory impact of U.S. immigration laws on the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and HIV-positive immigrants, their families and loved ones. Visit http://www.immigrationequality.org for more information.

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