Asylum policy and illegal immigration: perspectives and challenges

Our goal in this short paper is to study the link between asylum policy and illegal immigration. We will start by reviewing the process through which populations at risk can file for protection under the rules spelled out in the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees. We will then present descriptive evidence on the flows of asylum applications filed in Western destination countries between 1985 and 2014, and on the protected status recognition rates, focusing on the rejection decision over time and across the main destination countries.. We will finally review what happens to rejected asylum applicants, i.e. we will investigate to what extent the lack of recognition translates into removals. In the last section we will conclude providing a series of policy recommendations to break the link between asylum applications and illegal immigration.