Side Note On International Law

International law and the international community in general recognize three types of migrants.
One is the internally displaced person, someone who has been forced to move by war,
persecution or economic distress who stays within their native country.  The second group is
refugees, who have been forced from their home country by war or persecution.  And the third
group is economic migrants, people who have left their home country in search of jobs.

Internally displaced persons are the responsibility of their own government, which may or may
not choose to accept assistance from international non-governmental organizations and UN
agencies.

There is a significant debate going on among international relations scholars and human rights
organizations over the notion of "sovereignty."  The traditional understanding, rooted in four
centuries of theory and practice and strongly advocated by countries such as China and Russia, is
that "sovereignty " means that how a country conducts affairs inside its own borders is nobody
else's business.  The emerging revisionist perspective argues that the right of sovereignty comes
with a "responsibility to protect" and that gross abuses of people by their own government may
justify intervention by the international community. 

Refugees have a distinctive legal status and there is general acceptance of the idea that countries
are obliged to offer some shelter and haven to people who would be in grave physical danger in
their home country because of war or systematic persecution. 

Economic migrants have no international legal status.  They are at the mercy of the host country,
generally tolerated as long as they fill a need and do not provoke a backlash from the local
citizens, but always vulnerable to abuse by unscrupulous employers and in danger of becoming
scapegoats when the local economy turns down