Lev Lafayette <lev@levlafayette.com> wrote:
The UN Refugee Convention states that a person must seek asylum in the first safe country that they reach. By definition, countries which are not signatories are considered not safe, as they grant absolutely no legal protections to refugees.
Here is what the signatory map looks like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Refugeeconvention.PNG
As you can see there's a gaping hole between the Middle-East, the Indian subcontinent, SE Asia, to Australia.
This is why it has been suggested that a rational policy would be, first, to accept refugees as they arrive and process their claims, and, secondly, to encourage more countries which are currently not parties to the Convention to join. Many of those countries, as I understand it, already have refugee populations who then have to move on in order to seek asylum in states that recognize their rights.