7,000 Indians filed applications for asylum in US in 2017: UNHCR report

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’s (UNHCR) annual Global Trends report revealed that over 7,000 people from India filed applications for asylum in the US in 2017.

UNHCR report claims that America emerged as the largest recipient of new asylum requests for the first time in 2017 where the maximum number of asylum claims came from El Salvador (49,500) followed by Guatemala, Honduras and Venezuela. The other nationalities which show more than 5,000 claims in 2017 were Mexico with (26,100) claims, China (17,400), Haiti (8,600) and India (7,400).

According to UN report:

Rise in wars, other violence and persecution resulted in the displacement of nearly 6.85 crore people globally as of the end of 2017.

America emerged as the largest recipient of new asylum requests for the first time in 2017.

Crisis in Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan’s war, and the flight into Bangladesh from Myanmar of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees were the key factors behind the huge number of displaced people globally.

Afghanistan nationals filed the highest number of asylum claims making it to 124,900 in 80 different countries.

In India, there were 1.97 lakh refugees at the end of 2017, and 10,519 asylum seekers had pending cases.