More than 7,000 Indians sought asylum in US in 2017: UN report

The US was the largest recipient of fresh asylum requests in 2017 with over 7,000 people from India filing applications for asylum in that country, a report published by United Nations Refugee Agency has said, PTI reported.

The agency said in its annual Global Trends report that 68.5 million people around the world were displaced by the end of 2017 and of them, 16.2 million were displaced in the same year, either for the first time or repeatedly, the report added. It meant 44,500 people were being displaced each day and one person losing his/her base every two seconds, the report added.

Among the major reasons for the forced displacement are wars, violence and persecution and it was the fifth consecutive year that the same led to forced displacement to an alarming degree. The report cited the crisis on countries like Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan in Africa and the Rohingya refugees' flight from Myanmar into Bangladesh, saying the developing countries were being affected the most by this, PTI added.

Speaking on the asylum-seekers in the US, El Salvador topped the list with 49,500 people queuing up with applications. Applications for asylum skyrocketed from Venezuela, a country struggling for years now, with almost 30,000 people seeking a shelter in the US. Mexico had 26,100 people ready to move into the US while the numbers from China and Haiti read 17,400 and 8,600, respectively, the report said, adding that applications were received from 168 countries.

The report also said that there were 1,97,146 refugees in India at the end of 2017 and 10,519 asylum seekers with cases pending. It also said that were about 40,391 asylum seekers from India at 2017 end.

The report also revealed that Syria was no more the most common country of origin for new asylum-seekers and it was Afghanistan that became the origin of the most number of asylum seekers with 1,24,900 people ready to move to 80 different countries.