ABSTRACT
In the more than three decades since the signing of the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, a single principle has remained paramount, the principle that any individual who fears persecution has the right to seek asylum in a foreign country. All the battles over the Haitian and Cuban and Central American refugees have been over that central principle—the right to seek asylum. In principle upheld, in practice the right to seek asylum has been circumvented, ignored, even abrogated.
