PF-Teaching with Current Events: What is Our Obligation to Asylum Seekers?

Teaching with Current Events Series

Series Overview: Facing History and Ourselvesis a nonprofit educational and professional development organization that provides curricula resources and training that empower teachers to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, human rights, and civic participation. This year, the Literacy Assistance Center will work with Facing History and Ourselves to offer a four-part series introducing Facing History’s approach to pedagogy, and to equip teachers with the tools and strategies they need to help students become thoughtful, responsible citizens.

Session 4: What is Our Obligation to Asylum Seekers?

Description: Under what circumstances should a country feel responsible to accept and protect those fleeing danger in their own countries? The UNHRC (the United Nations Refugee Agency) calculates that there are 3.1 million asylum seekers worldwide. Among them are more than 7,000 men, women, and children, mainly from Central America, who are currently on the United States–Mexico border, and placed at the center of the latest US immigration-policy debate. Recent headlines have focused on the scale of the caravan of migrants from Central America, President Trump’s ban on asylum applications in certain circumstances, commitment of troops and use of tear gas at the border, and the unhealthy conditions in migrant shelters. Teachers can press pause on this barrage of news and provide critical context to help students understand international and US policy regarding asylum and its human consequences.

Many students have questions about the scope of nations’ obligations to asylum seekers and refugees and what rights are afforded these migrants.

In this workshop students will examine the following questions:

1. What is asylum, why might people seek it, and to what extent do countries have an obligation to provide asylum?
2. How are the United States’s evolving immigration policies impacting asylum seekers?
3. What measures are individuals taking to assist asylum seekers?