Thanks, Laura! This is very interesting indeed. I may have missed the info: does she mention the gender of the judges/interrogating officials? I wonder if it has affected the nature of the interrogation and maybe the outcome of the hearings at all.

McKinnon argues that refugee visa applicants can face an impossible tension between the two identities or sets of attributes they need to perform/communicate to be approved as both credible asylum applicants and worthy potential US citizens. On the one hand they need to communicate their suffering (or fear) of persecution in a convincing way. This may include demonstrating trauma and a story that involves fleeing quickly, without identity documents/visas. On the other hand they need to show that they are good potential citizens, through their past behaviour (eg did they use false documents to arrive in the US?) and are they capable of behaving self-sufficiently and responsibly in the future. Yet the very experiences of persecution that they must prove may undermine how well they fit into the category of good citizen.

The lawyer in me wants to offer up the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/StatusOfRefugees.aspx) as a helpful alternative for those debating definitions.

However, kind of tying back into the history argument, the 1951 Convention was created in response to and in the aftermath of World War II and limited its definition of a refugee to people escaping persecution “as a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951” (article 1A(2)). Fortunately, this time limit was removed by the 1967 Protocol, however sometimes it feels like the time or geographical limitation may still apply!