Illegal emigration

Illegal emigration refers to a person moving across national borders in a way that violates emigration laws. Such a person may legally go abroad and refuse to return when demanded by the country of origin.

Russia implemented emigration restrictions two months after the Russian Revolution of 1917, with the various Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union thereafter banning emigration. After the creation of the Eastern Bloc from countries occupied by the Soviet Union during World War II, Eastern Bloc countries instituted emigration bans similar to those in the Soviet Union. After the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, emigration except for ethnic migration reasons mostly halted from east-to-west. A few thousand escape attempts from East Germany occurred, including those by defecting border guards. (More generally, escape by any citizen was considered defection.) North Korea also strictly controls emigration.

Special cases are when one flees a country as a refugee escaping persecution or, after committing a crime, trying to escape prosecution. However, a person who enters another country as an illegal immigrant may be sent back, and if a criminal, a person may face extradition or prosecution in the other country.

The position of the United Nations is that freedom to emigrate is a human right, part of the right to freedom of movement. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country".

While illegal emigration is a concept at least as old as the North American colonies, a Freedom of movement policy has appeared at least in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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