The use and misuse of immigration and refugee law for national security risks and punitive ends by Canada and the Netherlands

States increasingly adopt policies constraining access for refugees to their territory due to the fear of possible foreign criminals in mixed migration movements. Some of these policies derive from international instruments and domestic laws regulating asylum-seeking. This study examines the use of immigration and refugee law for unrelated purposes, including national security and punitive ends, in the Netherlands and Canada and determines their effects on refugees from the Global South. The use of immigration measures for punitive ends is particularly encouraged to eradicate impunity against serious international crimes. By contrast, this thesis argues that identifying perpetrators of serious international crimes through law relating to asylum and immigration violates the fundamental rights of refugee claimants. This trend normalizes the use of asylum procedures, designed to save the lives of individuals fleeing dangers, for purposes unrelated to asylum-seeking in defiance of fundamental rights. This study establishes that the Netherlands used refugee law for punitive ends even if the use of refugee claimants’ testimony in subsequent criminal proceedings violates their right to a fair trial. In contrast, Canada uses the asylum process in violation of procedural rights in an administrative proceeding called security certificate, which can remove a non-citizen from Canada to the country where there is a likelihood of ill-treatment or the death penalty for the accused foreigner. Arguing that asylum testimonies and statements are not voluntarily made as a refugee claimant does not choose to participate in the security certificate system, this thesis demonstrates that Canadian courts are reluctant to perceive the danger of abusing asylum procedures for the sake of national security.Integrating refugees’ voices through that of their lawyers, this research also documents the unfair consequences of these instruments’ use on refugees and their families in Canada, including administrative limbo and deportation. The protracted limbo situation is particularly overlooked in the decision-making procedure. Building on the work of Hannah Arendt, the last part argues that migrants in limbo, waiting for their cases to be determined for long years at the Ministry level, are suffering a form of violence: the ‘violence of bureaucratization’. This form of violence, including living with administrative uncertainty with heavy consequences and detention with no trial rights, remains invisible to the current human rights discourse due to the underestimated consequences of the limbo situation. Drawing from the critical Third World scholarship and the work of Michael Walzer, this thesis concludes by discussing how the disenfranchisement of a group of non-citizens – those considered to be criminals or national security risks in their host country and live in indefinite limbo – has created a modern caste system in the Global North

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