EPISODE 04 - ASYLUM: CHARITY OR SOMETHING MORE?

I recently spoke with human rights legal scholar Silas Allard about asylum. Silas is the Managing Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. He argues that we should stop thinking that it's merely an act of charity when the United States grants asylum to a person fleeing persecution. He argues that a person has not only a right, but a duty, to flee persecution. If we interfere with a person fulfilling this obligation without a valid reason, according to this argument, we commit a moral wrong. In this conversation, we look to history and theology to explore whether we have an obligation to asylum-seekers. 

​Published May 8, 2019

Further Reading:

• Allard, Silas W. "Reimagining Asylum: Religious Narratives and the Moral Obligation to the Asylum Seeker." Refuge Vol 29, No 1 (2013): 121-129.
• Schoenholtz, Andrew I. “The New Refugees and the Old Treaty: Persecutors and Persecuted in the Twenty-First Century.” Chicago Journal of International Law 16 (2016-2015): 81–126.
• Betts, Alexander. Survival Migration: Failed Governance and the Crisis of Displacement. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013.