Millions of people are displaced each year by wars and violence. Thousands leave their countries, seeking refugee elsewhere. Those who come to a country asking for protection become called asylum seekers.

This man left Liberia in 2005 and applied for asylum in the United States. Like all the asylees I spoke to, he asked to remain anonymous to protect family members he left back home. He received asylum in early 2006.

The United States is among the 146 signers of the United Nations' "Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees"—known as the Geneva Convention. In 2005, the US and France were the top two countries in the world accepting asylum seekers—together welcoming almost 90 thousand people.

This man was smuggled to Europe on a ship…

The French and US asylum systems work in pretty much the same way: You arrive and present your case to someone who has been trained in asylum law, who decides if you are a refugee, based on the definition in the Geneva convention. A person is a refugee if he or she has a well founded fear of persecution, because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. This last category has been applied to women fleeing domestic violence, and gays facing homophobic aggression. The refugee convention was originally conceived right after World War II to deal with the hundreds of thousands of people displaced in Europe by the war.

Aristide Zolberg is a professor of Political Science at the New School in New York City. In 1967, the Refugee Convention was expanded to become a worldwide protocol. Nothing dictates how individual states are to implement the guidelines, and Dr. Zolberg explains that not everyone does it the same way:

But both France and the United States have long histories of accepting refugees. An asylum seeker presents his or her case to an officer or judge, who first has to determine whether or not the claim is credible. Frederic Thiberghien is on the board of France Terre d'Asile, an asylum advocacy organization in Paris. He says that proving who you are- and that your claim is valid- is tricky:

If you are granted asylum in the US, you'd hear something like this:

In both France and the US, asylees are get work authorization, and can bring their families.

If a claim is denied, an asylum seeker can appeal—but may ultimately be sent back. While there are variations in the procedures between the two countries, the biggest difference seems to be attitudes towards asylum as a concept, which get expressed in policy decisions

In the United States, since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, the government is particularly concerned with security. Bill Strassberger is a spokesman for the agency that administers asylum in the US:

While the US is worried about terrorists, Europe has a tendency to see asylum seekers as illegal immigrants:

Frederic Thiberghien explains that asylum is a political right, and so it should be separated from immigration:

France's asylum laws are of course, wrapped up with Europe. The EU has created a minimal framework for asylum, with the goal of having a common policy by 2010. This hasn't been easy. Matthieu Tardis is in charge of European Affairs at France Terre d'Asile:

Frederic Thiberghien agrees that the European standards are lower than France's, though he concedes that the regulations have improved conditions in other countries:

In 2005, France welcomed almost 50 thousand asylum seekers, and the US 40 thousand, though these numbers have been dropping steadily—all over the world. In Europe, the end of the war in the Balkans put a stop to thousands of refugees streaming into Germany and the rest of western Europe. Also, both the US and Europe are concerned about their borders. Here's Matthieu Tardis again:

The challenge today is to keep a balance between national interests and humanitarian and international obligations.

This Liberian man was granted asylum in the United States in 2003: