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MIGRATION: Many Iranians Embrace Asylum as a Way Out
By Omid Memarian*
BERKELEY, California, Apr 27 (IPS) - Increasingly, Iranians hoping for a brighter future and disappointed with the conservative direction of their homeland are seeking asylum abroad. They're crossing the border into Turkey and some are even employing human smugglers in their rough journey to Europe and even the United States.
As evidence of their need for asylum, they cite Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's provocative statements on international controversies like the nuclear issue, accounts of massacres ordered by members of his cabinet, and the increasing power of Islamist hardliners in Iran, which, they argue, has endangered them.
But many are neither dissidents nor members of minority groups. They are average poor and frustrated Iranians who are hoping for a better life outside their country, where unemployment among youth 14-29 years old is upwards of 25 percent.
"After conservatives came to power in the recent presidential election, granting refugee status to Iranians has become a lot more likely in Europe," said Saeed, a 23-year-old asylum seeker who recently left Iran for Turkey.
He spoke with IPS at a small, cheap hotel in Istanbul, where he was waiting to meet human smugglers, known in Iran as "paratroopers". He's hoping they'll help him make his way to Europe, but whether that will happen is unclear. "It is hard to trust the paratroopers. I am worried and uncertain about the future," he added.
Turkey is a natural stepping-stone on these asylum seekers' way to Europe. Not only do Iranians not need a visa to travel to Turkey, but because Turkey is trying to join the European Union, it is seen as a promising first stop on route to countries like England, Germany, and other northern European nations.
Some of the would-be asylees are in serious need of international protection. A growing number of others, however, are simply looking for economic and social improvement in their lives, and they see the asylum process as more promising than other immigration prospects.
But their chances of receiving asylum are not good. After the bombings in London last June, the EU intensified its criteria for granting refugee status. The process in the U.S. has also become almost impossible for immigrants of many nationalities, including Iranians, since the attacks of Sep. 11, 2001.
While the total number of Iranian asylum seekers in Europe is hard to determine, they are the largest group of asylum seekers in Britain, which had 820 applicants in the last quarter of 2005 (up from 750 in the third quarter of 2005). Of 700 initial decisions made in relation to Iranians during this period, 595 people were refused asylum.
Some Iranian asylum seekers like Saeed make up stories in order to increase their chances of becoming legal refugees in European countries, where they have no other legal way of immigrating. These stories range from political threats or exaggerated tales of imprisonment, to accounts of dangers from religious conversion and persecution for being gay or lesbian.
Asylum seekers closely follow news from Iran, including Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel speeches, human rights violations, and insistence on gaining access to nuclear energy. They hope Iran's hardliner president and his misbehaviour on the international stage will add credence and urgency to their petitions for asylum.
Iranian buses drop off their passengers in Turkey in a bustling Istanbul neighbourhood known as Aksaray. Reza, who is married and has one child, has come to Aksaray in order to eventually make his way to England. He explains that he left Iran because he doesn't think that the country has a promising future.
For their journey, Reza and his family have to pay human smugglers and document forgers. "I have all the documents they ask for. I have made a university student ID, a few court summons and a document that shows that I was a prisoner in Tehran," he says. "These false documents cost 1,100 U.S. dollars for me."
Reza is a tailor and he has been able to use his skills to find a job in Turkey during his stay. Some Iranian asylum seekers, however, come to Turkey with only a couple hundred or thousand dollars and no job skills. They end up working as custodians, housecleaners, street hawkers and cheap labourers.
Not surprisingly, young Iranian girls who have come to Turkey without money or enough support live in some of the most dreadful conditions. Mahshid, who was too shy to speak with me, is among these girls. A friend related her story: she had a white-collar job in Tehran, but after more than a year in Istanbul, she has run out of money, and now lives in the same cut-rate hotel where she cleans rooms.
Moving on from Istanbul can take months and even years, and when girls like Mahshid spend the money they brought for the journey, they often end up as cleaning women, bar dancers or sex workers to earn enough to move on. Some of them return to Iran, but the rest believe that they have burned all their bridges at home.
Meanwhile, many human smugglers charge asylum-seekers thousands of dollars and promise to help them leave Turkey for Europe. But those promises are often false. Smugglers commonly fool would-be asylees, taking their money and disappearing or simply failing to help them cross Turkey's borders.
Saeed says that a smuggler charged him and his family 4,000 dollars to send them to the border of Turkey and Greece, where they were identified and arrested by Greek police. After 48 hours of detention, they were sent back to Istanbul on a bus.
Some Iranian refugee seekers end up residing in Turkey for many years. Agha Mahmoud, who is a custodian and sometime receptionist in one of Istanbul's half star hotels, left Iran for Turkey five years ago, hoping to immigrate to Europe. But his attempts have failed, and he has been deported from both Greece and Cypress. He says that he stayed in Turkey for so long that his wife divorced him in Iran and that now he has no motivation to return. So he decided to simply stay and work in Turkey.
Those who are able to make it to the border cities and get to one of the islands in Greece by boat or ship have to spend three months in a camp until the accuracy of their claims is proven. After this time, they will either receive a positive answer or get sent back to Turkey. The unfortunate ones get arrested during their trip to Greece and are returned to Turkey.
In previous years, the smuggled passengers used to get to European countries through Bosnia. Now that the path to Bosnia is closed, Greece serves as the gateway for sending these illegal passengers to Europe.
Most of the Iranian asylum seekers in Turkey do not predict a promising future for Iran. Many believe that recent events and mounting hostility in the West toward leaders such as President Ahmadinejad, an Islamist fundamentalist, strengthen their chances of becoming refugees in the European Union or find a way to go to United States where the biggest Iranian expatriate community exists.
Nobody knows if this is true or not, but it is a dream they like to believe in. And why do these people choose to take such brutal and harsh journey? The common response of most of the asylum seekers who come to Turkey is the following: "There is no hope left for us in Iran."
*Omid Memarian is an Iranian journalist and civil society activist. He has won several awards, including Human Rights Watch's highest honour in 2005, the Human Rights Defender Award. Omid is currently a visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
Azadeh Pourzand also contributed to this story from Oberlin University.
(END/2006)
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