By Chad Groening, OneNewsNow - "There is tremendous poverty in Brazil, as there is throughout Latin America; there is rampant crime, but those are not grounds for political asylum in the United States," Mehlman asserts. "Political asylum is reserved for people who are being singled out for persecution by their governments based on a series of considerations such as race, religion, [or] political beliefs. What we're seeing in Brazil is the same phenomenon that we have seen from other countries, where people recognize that the asylum system in the United States is easily taken advantage of."