In this case its not about clearance, its about immigration status. I'm not an expert on any of this but my understanding is you can work straight away as a re

In this case its not about clearance, its about immigration status. I'm not an expert on any of this but my understanding is you can work straight away as a refugee with a pending status. This is fine for normal companies but it gets very tricky for companies under ITAR. If the asylum application gets rejected, the work the person did when on pending status could be a violation. All the work they do after rejection would be an ITAR violation (so the company would have continuously monitor status).