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Understand asylum. Verify that you are eligible to apply. See if you can include your family. Confirm that you are not disqualified from applying. Do not wait.
Asylum is a benefit offered to refugees who are fleeing persecution in their home countries. If you win asylum, you can stay in the United States and eventually apply to become a permanent legal resident by getting a "green card," known more formally as a United States Permanent Resident card. Asylum applications can be "defensive" or "affirmative." A defensive asylum application is one made when you are in removal proceedings in the U.S., either because you are attempting to enter the country without proper papers or because you broke an immigration law when inside the country and are about to be deported. Affirmative asylum applications are ones you file when not in removal proceedings. In order to apply for asylum, you typically need be physically present in the United States. . You must also have suffered from (or fear that you will suffer from) persecution in your home country. This persecution must be shown to be based on at least one of the following personal attributes: race religion nationality membership in a particular social group political opinion In affirmative asylum applications, you can include your spouse and any unmarried children under the age of 21. Any other children must apply for asylum on his or her own. There are several bars to winning asylum in the United States. Many of these involve criminal activity undertaken either in the United States or elsewhere. For example, if you participated in the persecution of any person on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular group, you would be ineligible for asylum. Other bars include: a conviction for a serious crime (which includes aggravated felonies) the commission of a serious, nonpolitical crime outside the United States your posing a danger to the security of the U.S. your being already firmly resettled in another country before arriving in the U.S. You must make an application for asylum within one year of arriving in the United States. However, you can make an application later if there has been a material change of circumstances. For example, if people from your political party are suddenly targeted for assassination while you are in the United States, you could claim that circumstances have sufficiently changed so that an application after the deadline is acceptable. If there has been a change of circumstances, you should file for asylum within a "reasonable" amount of time. USCIS does not define "reasonable" with any precision, so you are best advised not to wait.