ABSTRACT

Persons from former Soviet Union represent one of the most important groups of claimants in Canada, the United States and Europe. Interviewing persons from the former Soviet Union is itself a lesson in coping with claimants' attitudes towards bureaucracies. Their culture, their values, and their methods of self-expression resembles our own, so the role and the purpose of the interview process is not for them as mysterious or foreboding as it is for individuals from cultures more unlike our own, which gives them a distinct advantage in terms of argumentation techniques. This chapter expresses that refugees from the former Soviet Union often justify their choice of Canada or America through reference to the American Dream. The American Dream is a well-known vision amongst persons in the First World, one which is generally described in terms of possessions, lifestyle, political vision and possible worlds.