by Andy Lamey
20060206SueHoffman.html, last accessed September 11, 2009.
41 “free-market sea” William Langewiesche, The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), p. 13.
42 “The people on the top deck” Survivors Speak: Ahmed Hussein, http://sievx.com/archives/2003_07-08/20030705.shtml, last accessed March 26, 2009.
43 Australia reintroduced a version of mandatory detention Hayden Cooper and staff, “Onshore Defence Base to House Asylum Seekers,” ABC News, April 18, 2010; Emma Rodgers, “New Centres to House 2,000 Asylum Seekers,” ABC News, October 18, 2010.
CHAPTER 5: Raising the Castle
1 “Deportation is murder” Tamara Jones, “Bonn Vote OKs Strict Curbs on Asylum-Seekers,” Los Angeles Times, May 27, 1993.
2 “We are one people” Niklaus Steiner, Arguing About Asylum: The Complexity of Refugee Debates in Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000)
3 Neo-Nazi out of parliament Steiner, Arguing About Asylum, p. 85.
4 “You will see: whoever votes today” Arguing About Asylum, p. 85.
5 “a more rigid general version of the rule of law” Peter Graf Kielmansegg, “West Germany’s Constitution: Response to the Past or Design for the Future?” The World Today, October 1989, p. 176.
6 “anti-Weimar Constitution” Kielmansegg, “West Germany’s Constitution,” p. 176.
7 “If we include limitations” Quoted in Wolfgang Bosswick, “Development of Asylum Policy in Germany,” Journal of Refugee Studies, vol. 13, no. 1 (2000), p. 44.
8 “Because national feeling developed” Quoted in Matthew Gibney, The Ethics and Politics of Asylum: Liberal Democracy and the Response to Refugees (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 91.
9 they accounted for up to 70 percent of the refugee claims Bosswick, “Development of Asylum Policy in Germany,” p. 50.
10 “While the number of applicants” Gibney, Ethics and Politics, p. 97.
11 “Their tradition of nationalism” Quoted in Bill Schiller, “Germany Is Torn by Refugee Crisis,” Toronto Star, November 21, 1992.
12 Don’t stone foreigners Alexandra Tuttle, “Germany’s Bid for Normality,” The Wall Street Journal, November 24, 1992, p. 6.
13 Heil Hitler Stephen Kinzer, “Germans Hold Suspect In Firebombing That Killed Three Turks,” the New York Times, November 27, 1992.
14 “Let’s not wait until the immigration problem” Quoted in Craig Whitney, “Bonn Hopes to Move More Quickly on Asylum,” New York Times, November 17, 1992.
15 “We have the freest constitution ever” Quoted in Henrik Bering-Jensen, “A Flood of Strangers in Estranged Lands,” Insight, January 4, 1993.
16 98 percent of pre-1993 cases would be ineligible Bosswick, “Development of Asylum Policy in Germany,” p. 51.
17 “Granting asylum is always a question” Quoted in Bosswick, “Development of Asylum Policy in Germany,” p. 44.
18 “While applying for asylum” Gibney, Ethics and Politics, p. 103.
19 “I was disappointed because this is the first step” “Gunter Grass Says German Politicians Akin to ‘Skinheads,’ ” Reuters, January 31, 1993.
20 “Kidnapped” Antonio Cruz, “Carrier Sanctions in Four European Community States: Incompatibilities Between International Civil Aviation and Human Rights Obligations,” Journal of Refugee Studies, vol. 4. No. 1 1991, p. 73.
21 “Increasingly reluctant to carry passengers” Cruz, “Carrier Sanctions,” p. 72.
22 “many asylum-seekers are refused asylum” Asylum Aid, “Still No Reason at All: Home Office Decisions on Asylum Claims,” London, 1999, p. 1.
23 “Several asylum-seekers have been ‘released’ ” Amnesty International, “Belgium: The Death of Semira Adamu—Responsibilities Past and Present,” December 10, 2003.
24 In 1999 a forty-year-old Algerian woman Elisabeth Zimmermann, “Algerian Refugee Commits Suicide in Frankfurt Airport’s Asylum Zone,” World Socialist Web Site, May 24, 2000, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/may2000/asyl-m24.shtml, last accessed March 28, 2010.
25 “Certain key aspects of Dutch asylum policy” Human Rights Watch, “Fleeting Refuge: The Triumph of Efficiency Over Protection in Dutch Asylum Policy,” New York, 2003, p. 31.
26 Ibrahim Zijad, a thirty-one-year-old Palestinian refugee “Airport Refugee Gains Asylum After Seven Months,” International Herald Tribune, November 2, 2004.
27 “contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” Human Rights Watch, “Universal Periodic Review of Switzerland,” May 4, 2008.
28 “manifestly well-founded” U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, “World Refugee Survey 2010, Country Reports, European Union,” http://www.refugees.org/countryreports.aspx?id=2138, last accessed March 21, 2010.
29 “European countries have crafted policies” U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, “Worst Places for Refugees,” World Refugee Survey 2008, New York, p. 5.
30 “Greece effectively has no asylum system” Human Rights Watch, “Greece: Unsafe and Unwelcoming Shores,” October 12, 2009, New York.
31 Anomalous Zones Gerald L. Neuman, “Anomalous Zones,” Stanford Law Review, vol. 48, 1996, p. 1197.
32 “People have said we have our own Guantánamo” Linda Briskman interview, October 29, 2008.
33 an annual average of 150,000 refugee applicants United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, The State of the World’s Refugees 2006: Human Displacement in the New Millennium, Annex Eight: Asylum Applications and Total Admissions in Industrialized Countries, 1995–2004 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 225.
34 over 1.5 million ethnic Germans Merih Anil, “No More Foreigners? The Remaking of German Naturalization and Citizenship Law, 1990–2000,” Dialectical Anthropology, vol. 29 (2005), p. 457.
35 Germany, whose average annual recognition rate Philip Martin, “Germany: Reluctant Land of Immigration,” in Wayne Cornelius, Philip Martin and James Hollifield, eds. Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective, (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 192. See also United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, The State of the World’s Refugees 1997: A Humanitarian Agenda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), chapter 5, Figure 5.5.
36 “the perversion of the state” Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, new edition (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967), p. 231.
37 1.3 million people living in refugee camps United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, “Statistics,” http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=253, last accessed March 28, 2010.
38 “Possibly, one of the reasons” Anat Ben-Dor and Rami Adut, “Israel: A Safe Haven? Problems in the Treatment Offered by the State of Israel to Refugees and Asylum Seekers,” The Public Interest Law Resource Center and Physicians for Human Rights, Tel Aviv, September 2003, pp. 27–28.
39 a group that amounted to sixty people during the 1990s U.S. Committee for Refugees, “World Refugee Survey 2001—Israel, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/type,ANNUALREPORT,USCRI,
ISR,3b31e1641b,0.html, last accessed March 28, 2010.
40 forcibly returning Eritrean asylum-seekers to Egypt Human Rights Watch, “Service for Life: State Repression and Indefinite Conscription in Eritrea,” Part 3: The Experience of Eritrean Refugees, April 16, 2009.
41 “constructive refoulement” Quoted in Ben-Dor and Adut, “Israel: A Safe Haven?” p. 39.
42 “Much of what attracted Japanese to Germany” Quoted in John Haffner, Thomas Casas i Klett and Jean-Pierre Lehmann, Japan’s Open Future: An Agenda for Global Citizenship (London: Anthem, 2009), pp. 44–45.
43 “He saw the people in the refugee division” Saul Takahashi, “The Wall: Asylum-Seekers in Japan,” Refugee Participation Network 19, May 1995.
44 Legal aid is “hopelessly inadequate” Saul Takahashi, quoted in Haffner et al., Japan’s Open Future, p. 215.
45 expected to meet an “unusually high standard of proof” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
, The State of the World’s Refugees: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 182.
46 “it is practically impossible to get asylum” Takahashi, “The Wall.”
47 an average of 27 asylum claims per year United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2005 UNHCR Statistical Yearbook, Country Data Sheet, Japan, p. 382.
48 an asylum system designed not to protect refugees from danger, but to protect Japanese people from refugees I owe this phrase to John Haffner.
49 “Asylum is analogous to” “The U.S.-Canada Safe Third Country Agreement: A Vital First Step,” Statement of Mark Krikorian before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims, October 16, 2002.
50 Japan received an average of only 174 applications per year United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2002 UNHCR Statistical Yearbook, Country Data Sheet, Japan, p. 348.
51 while during the same period Israel averaged 150 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2002 UNHCR Statistical Yearbook, Country Data Sheet, Israel, p. 342. UNHCR statistics for Israel include 6,000 members of the Israel-sponsored South Lebanon Army and their families to whom Israel granted permanent residency in 2000. SLA militiamen do not meet the international definition of a refugee, and so I have not included them in Israel’s refugee statistics.
52 “In reality, constitutional asylum was never” Hélène Lambert, Francesco Messineo and Paul Tiedemann, “Comparative Perspectives of Constitutional Asylum in France, Italy, and Germany: requiescat in pace?” Refugee Survey Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 3 (2008), p. 21.
53 The UN Committee against Torture, Amnesty International and other groups Amnesty International, “France Amnesty International Report 2008” and “France Amnesty International Report 2009”; The European Court of Human Rights, Gebremedhin [Gaberamadhien] v. France (application no. 25389/05), April 26, 2007; Adel Tebourski v. France, CAT/C/38/D/300/2006, UN Committee against Torture, May 11, 2007.
54 home to a total refugee population of 26,875 people United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, “2006 Global Trends: Refugees, Asylum-seekers, Returnees, Internally Displaced and Stateless Persons,” p. 17.
55 “in the world of betrayed constitutional provisions” Lambert et al., “Comparative Perspectives of Constitutional Asylum,” p. 25.
56 via Libya in the thousands BBC News, “UN seeks access to Italy migrants,” October 4, 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3714922.stm, last accessed March 28, 2010.
57 “As part of his new pan-African policy” Hein de Haas, “Trans-Saharan Migration to North Africa and the EU: Historical Roots and Current Trends,” Migration Information Source, November 2006, http://www.migrationinformation.org/USfocus/display.cfm?id=484, last accessed March 28, 2010.
58 a 78 percent asylum acceptance rate Human Rights Watch, “Pushed Back, Pushed Around: Italy’s Forced Return of Boat Migrants and Asylum Seekers, Libya’s Mistreatment of Migrants and Asylum Seekers,” New York, September 2009, p. 11.
59 “For the first time in the post-World War II era” Human Rights Watch, “Pushed Back, Pushed Around,” p. 4.
60 “We don’t have an internationally agreed system” Howard Adelman interview, autumn 2004.
CHAPTER 6: An Asylum Made of Thoughts
1 “Arendt’s voice inside my head” Samantha Power interview, autumn 2004. Unless otherwise indicated, all subsequent Power quotes are from this interview.
2 “beyond human rights” Giorgio Agamben, “Beyond Human Rights,” in Means Without Ends: Notes on Politics, trans. Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), p. 15.
3 “With his collarless shirts and dark suits” Daniel Binswanger, “Preacher of the Profane,” Signandsight.com, October 17, 2005, http://www.signandsight.com/features/399.html, last accessed May 20, 2009.
4 “The battle [against terrorism]” Quoted in Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy 1943–1980 (London: Penguin, 1990), p. 379.
5 “instead of championing civil-rights issues” Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, p. 380.
6 “The decree was never repealed” Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 2.
7 “truly sacred, in the sense” Agamben, “Beyond Human Rights,” p. 22.
8 “in which the normal order is de facto suspended” Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 174.
9 “The paradox from which Arendt departs” Agamben, Homo Sacer, p. 126.
10 “Fascism and Nazism” Agamben, Homo Sacer, p. 130.
11 “By applying these techniques” Quoted in Karen Arenson, “In Protest, Professor Cancels Visit to the U.S.,” New York Times, January 17, 2004.
12 “Humanitarian organizations … maintain” Agamben, Homo Sacer, p. 133.
13 “the perfume of the radical” Binswanger, “Preacher of the Profane.”
14 “the strange relationship of law” Ulrich Raulff, “An Interview with Giorgio Agamben,” German Law Journal, vol. 5, no. 5 (2004), p. 609.
15 “This is what, in our culture” Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community, trans. Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), p. 86.
16 “pornographic” J. M. Bernstein, “Bare Life, Bearing Witness: Auschwitz and the Pornography of Horror,” Parallax, vol. 10, no. 1 (2004), p. 3.
17 “ontological loathing for government” Timothy Brennan, “The Empire’s New Clothes,” Critical Inquiry, vol. 29, no. 2 (2003), p. 341.
18 “These facts and reflections” Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, new edition (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967), p. 299.
19 “so-called human rights” Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in Nonsense Upon Stilts: Bentham, Burke, and Marx on the Rights of Man Jeremy Waldron, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1987), p. 146.
20 “he preferred his ‘Rights of an Englishman’ ” Agamben, Homo Sacer, p. 127.
21 “Yet the evolving human rights system” Samantha Power, “The Lesson of Hannah Arendt,” New York Review of Books, April 29, 2004, p. 36. Power’s essay is also the preface to a 2004 edition of Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism published by Schocken.
22 endorses a suggestion to make Jerusalem Agamben, “Beyond Human Rights,” p. 24. Agamben suggests that such an arrangement could be “generalized as a model of new international relations,” but says little about how such an arrangement would work.
23 “the possibility of a nonstatist politics” Giorgio Agamben, “Forms of Life,” in Means Without Ends, p. 8.
24 Take him for an anarchist See Brennan, “The Empire’s New Clothes,” p. 341.
25 “a thinker of great value” Paul Virno, “General Intellect, Exodus, Multitude: Interview with Paulo Virno,” generation-online.org, http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpvirn02.htm, last accessed May 20, 2009.
26 “writers and intellectuals can no longer” Quoted in Lise Wilar, “Le Parlement International des Ecrivans,” écrits … vains? http://ecrits-vains.com/mots_dits/willar46.htm, last accessed May 20, 2009 (my translation).
27 “a genuine innovation” Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes (New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 4.
28 Casts doubt upon the The Oxford Companion to Literature, Margaret Drabble, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 265.
29 “Toward the end of his life” Roy Rivenburg, “A Philosophical View of Sex,” Los Angeles Times, February 25, 2007 (online).
30 The 1993 Pasqua Law Not to be confused with an earlier Pasqua Law of 1986.
31 sustained protest against the “mean-minded” Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, p. 11.
32 “Since the Middle Ages” Christian Salmon, “The Parliament of a Missing People,” Autodafe Vol. 1: The Journal of the International Parliament of Writers, p. 13. Salmon does not indicate which
cities and states he is referring to, and may be speaking slightly anachronistically. See chapter 9.
33 “Arendt was writing of something” Jacques Derrida, Cosmopolites de tous les pays, encore un effort! (Paris: Editions Galilee, 1997), p. 23 (my translation).
34 “equipped with new rights” Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, p. 7.
35 “At a time when we claim to be lifting” Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, p. 13.
36 “could it, when dealing with the related” Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, p. 9.
37 “this generous border city” Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, p. 18
38 “God orders Moses to institute” Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, p. 17.
39 “unconditional Law of hospitality” Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, p. 22.
40 “secularized theological heritage” Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, p. 20.
41 “We have doubtless chosen the term” Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, p. 16.
42 “the fifth largest port in the world” Michael Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 180.
43 between fifteen thousand and seventeen thousand Jews Shanghai refugee figures taken from Marcia Ristaino, Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 103; Marrus, The Unwanted, p. 181; David Kranzler, Japanese, Nazis and Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1938–1945 (Hoboken, N.J.: KTAV Publishing House, 1976), p. 90.
44 “took on the character of a universal conspiracy” Kranzler, Japanese, Nazis and Jews, p. 152.
45 “Both American and British residents” Ristaino, Port of Last Resort, p 112.
46 “obsolete privilege” “A Bogus Brand of Sanctuary,” National Post (editorial), July 27, 2004.
47 “facilitates lawlessness” Chuck Baldwin, “No Sanctuary for Illegal Aliens at Our Church,” newswithviews.com, May 15, 2007, http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin369.htm, last accessed May 20, 2009.
