Refugee Law
In thinking about refugee law is and what it should be, one should take Global Warming into consideration. The question will be “should people displaced by “natural disasters” attributed to Climate Change, be eligible for refugee status?
Currently, the definition of Refugee is, “a person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country.”
If for example, Haiti was hit by a Hurricane or was for some other reason completely flooded; would we call the displaced Haitians refugees? I assume that we would; but current refugge law wouldn’t recognize them as such because they wouldnt be being persecuted nor would they owed their fear on account of their membership to “race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion”.
Common sense dictates that if such a catastrophe was to occurred, we would take then victims into our bosom and change our current “refugee law;” however, it makes a lot more sense to start thinking about this early on and make some changes in our law proactively so that we know what to do in such circumstance. It would be most unfortunate if the fiasco of Hurricane Katrina was to repeat itself, the implications of something like that occurring would be devastating. If Katrina cause so much strife and it did not involve “aliens,” imagine what would happen if those affected where not US citizens and our “refugee law” system was not prepared to handle it.
