U.N. demands that illegal immigrants have asylum in U.S.

The United Nations are pushing for many of the immigrants fleeing from Central America to the United States to be treated as refugees who have been displaced by armed conflict. A designation designed to increase pressure on the U.S. to except the tens of thousands of potential immigrants who want asylum.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Officials with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees say they want to see a regional agreement status made by July 10, between migration and interior department representatives from the U.S., Mexico and Central America who will meet in Nicaragua.

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This meeting will discuss updating a 30-year-old declaration regarding the obligations nations have to aid refugees.

A resolution made at this meeting would lack any legal authority in the U.S., but the agency said it believes that "the U.S. and Mexico should recognize that this is a refugee situation, which implies that they shouldn't be automatically sent to their home countries but rather receive international protection."

Most of those whom are widely considered refugees by international law are those who are fleeing more traditional political or ethnic conflicts like those in Syria, the Sudan, or Iraq. Central Americans would be the first modern migrants considered refugees because they are fleeing violence and extortion at the hands of large criminal gangs that have more authority in some regions than the government.

"They are leaving for some reason. Let's not send them back in a mechanical way, but rather evaluate the reasons they left their country," said Fernando Protti, a regional representative for the U.N. refugee agency.

Since October of 2013, more than 52,000 immigrant children have crossed the border into the U.S. illegally, and the number of total illegal immigrants continues to rise in the United States. Many of these immigrants come from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

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