Fulfilling the Promise?: When Humanitarian Obligations and Foreign Policy Goals Conflict in the United States

In Seeking Refuge: Central American Migration to Mexico, the United States, and Canada, María Cristina García evaluates the United States’ response to political and military upheavals in Central America in the 1980s. García explains that both international and domestic law demanded that the United States provide refugee status to individuals with a “well-founded fear of persecution.” She suggests that, because it played a significant role in creating these refugees, the United States had an even greater responsibility to provide for their refuge. This Book Review evaluates the failure of U.S. law and policy to realize even the minimal standards established under international agreements with regard to the protection of refugees. In examining the situations in Central America in the 1980s and Iraq now, it concludes that the United States must fulfill its obligations under international law without regard to whether the United States contributed to the refugee-creating crisis