Can illegal immigrants gain refugee status?

First we have to look at the international "laws".

According to the wiki, a "refugee" is defined as

"A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.."

en.wikipedia.org...

It mentions that certain individuals cannot be legally recognized as "refugees", and lists "war criminals" as an example of this type of restriction.

A vast majority of illegal immigrants seem to actually be fleeing war, political instability or corruption, and all types of other terrible things.

This applies to pretty much all nations globally at least in theory, right?

So why isn't this aspect brought up ever?

Solving issues like this is extremely complex, because there are pretty much three choices that I can think of.
1) Force them back into whatever they were running from.
2) Let them integrate into your nation's cities.
3) Put them in some type of camp or reservation, a "refugee camp".

But perhaps the most effective strategy of all would simply be to take political action to solve the issues causing mass influxes of illegal immigrants from particular regions.

I know this is an issue that effects many nations globally and can become extremely heated, and I was curious what types of actual working solutions we could have for this issue which could easily be described as a "refugee situation".