US Tops France As No. 1 Destination For Asylum Seekers -UN

The U.S. has overtaken France as the country with the highest number of asylum applications, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday. Some 25,500 people filed asylum requests in the U.S. during the first half of 2006, which represents one-fifth of the total number of applications in industrialized countries, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said in its quarterly report on asylum figures. The figures were only for asylum requests, not for approvals. France had the most applications last year, but its asylum requests dropped by 41% from the same period in 2005, to 16,400.

The U.S. and France are followed by the U.K., Germany and Canada in the number of asylum requests.

Most of the applicants to industrialized countries in the first half of 2006 came from China, with 8,800, followed by Iraq with 8,500, Serbia and Montenegro with 8,000, and Russia with 6,900.