Will Anyone Welcome Iran’s Christian Refugees?
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(OPINION) In recent weeks, the plight of a group of Iranian asylum-seekers claiming to be converts to Christianity has been followed by The New York Times, helping to shine a light on a story not commonly reported by the mainstream media.
The story, that is, of Iranian Christian refugees who for years now have found it harder and harder to find anyone willing to accept them.
The persecution experienced by Christians in Iran, and especially converts to Christianity, has been documented for years by the organization I work for, Article18.
Indeed, there are few now — other than perhaps the Iranian authorities themselves and their closest allies — who would dispute the existence of persecution, thereby tacitly also accepting that Iranian Christians meet the standards required to be understood as legitimate refugees.
And yet, the truth is that there are perhaps even fewer who are today willing to offer safe haven to these refugees.
The group followed by the Times, whose claims Article18 has not yet been able to independently verify, were among the first to be deported from the United States to Panama — others have also been sent to Costa Rica — as part of a new policy of “exporting” migrants, as some have termed it, in a similar way to the United Kingdom’s former agreement with Rwanda.
According to the Times, the majority of the 299 migrants who have so far arrived in Panama willingly agreed to return to their countries of origin, but 112 — including the Iranians whose stories were reported by the newspaper — did not and have now been granted temporary visas.
The reality is that these visas, as their “temporary” nature makes clear, represent only a stop-gap, providing holders with just 30 days to find another country willing to accept them — or 90 days were they to extend their visas to their legal limit.
After that, a Panamanian official made clear, the asylum-seekers would be judged to be staying in the country illegally.
And all too often this is a position where Iranian Christian refugees — and no doubt refugees of many other stripes — increasingly seem to find themselves.
Over the past two years, my organization has released reports on the plight of Iranian Christian refugees in Turkey, Georgia and even Sweden, with growing fears of deportation in each case, amid reduced options for resettlement.
Indeed, it would appear that refugees are simply no longer wanted in the vast majority of the Western world today, including, it would seem, Donald Trump’s America.
Last October, a joint report by Christian charities World Relief and Open Doors warned that while the resettlement of Iranian Christian refugees to the U.S. had rebounded in 2024 after years of decline, there was no guarantee the trend would continue, with Trump vowing to suspend resettlement entirely “on day one” if re-elected — a promise he duly fulfilled.
Last month, the independent, bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom called on the Trump administration to reopen the Lautenberg-Specter Program, which prioritises the resettlement of oppressed religious groups, including Christians from Iran, saying that “pausing this lifeline places already vulnerable individuals at heightened risk of persecution.”
“It also jeopardises host countries’ willingness to provide safe harbour for applicants while they undergo US vetting,” warned USCIRF Commissioner Susie Gelman.
There had been renewed hope for Iranian Christian refugees seeking resettlement to the States in 2023, with the launch of the Welcome Corps scheme, through which individuals or churches can sponsor refugees in a similar way to the successful Canadian model. But it soon transpired that for the bulk of Iranian refugees, who reside in Turkey, the program would be inaccessible, owing to fraught U.S.-Turkish relations.
It is partly as a result of such challenges that in recent years many Iranian Christian refugees have started to look elsewhere for refuge, such as Georgia. However, as our December 2024 report revealed, many refugees (some of whom had already spent years in Turkey before moving to Georgia) have found the same challenges there.
It could even be argued that the situation for Iranian refugees in Georgia is worse than in Turkey, with less than 1% of applicants receiving positive answers from Georgia’s immigration service over the past three years, while still facing the same threat of deportation.
It is within this context that many refugees, including one of those interviewed for the Georgia report, have begun considering additional options, such as making their way to the U.S.’ previously porous southern border.
But even before Trump’s return to office, the route was not without its risks, and never guaranteed success.
According to one Iranian asylum-seeker interviewed by the Times, paying her smuggler to take her to the border in Tijuana alone cost her and her brother $3,000 dollars each — money they won’t get back — while the flights to take them from Iran to Mexico in the first place won’t have come cheap.
But beyond the financial and emotional costs, another unexpected consequence of the recent increase in Iranian and Afghan refugees making for the U.S. border has been for some of the countries actually willing to take in such refugees (such as Brazil) to begin rejecting applications, for fear they are only being used as a stepping stone to the promised land.
All of which leaves Iranian Christian refugees with fewer and fewer options for resettlement, as the years go by and their dreams of a new place to call home appear no closer to being realized.
Steve Dew-Jones is News Director at Article18, an advocacy organisation working on behalf of Iran's persecuted Christians.