In today’s immigration news: the already-broken U.S. asylum system gets worse—for family groups, for asylum seekers waiting at the border, for asylum seekers looking for legal representation, for just about everybody.
President Biden’s latest executive order restricting asylum is only one of the many moving parts in the complicated U.S. immigration system.
[MPR] “Julia Decker is the policy director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. She says it’s too soon to tell how the new border restrictions will impact Minnesota. But they may pose a threat to an already complicated and nuanced immigration system which has historically created limited legal pathways for people to gain citizenship in the U.S.
“’When we talk about immigration reform, it’s, not just asylum and it’s not just the family immigration systems, but potentially how do we create other pathways for folks to be able to access the legal immigration system and use that system to attain lawful status because currently there are just so few ways for many of these folks to do that,’ Decker said.”
The Biden executive order is touted as closing the border. It won’t. Neither rules nor resources are sufficient to do that.
[MSNBC] “To start with, the administration is benefiting from some confusion over what Biden actually did. It’s true that under the proclamation — and, just as importantly, the new regulation (published in “interim final” form) that came along with it — irregular border crossers are generally prevented from receiving the immigration status known as asylum. But that’s not the same as saying they’re prevented from staying in the U.S. International agreements prevent the U.S. from deporting someone to a country where they will be persecuted on the basis of specific grounds of identity or from delivering torture victims back to the governments that torture them. Under normal conditions, such people can often qualify for asylum in the U.S.; even if they don’t (because of a criminal record, for example), they may qualify for lesser forms of protection that can’t be converted to citizenship but can come with work permits. Those latter protections are still available under Biden’s proclamation, no matter how many people are crossing the border. …
“But here’s what the administration refuses to acknowledge: Even before Tuesday, the problems with border processing weren’t about who was eligible for what form of protection. They were about resource bottlenecks. …
“The opposite of border chaos is, obviously, border order: clear, consistent processing that runs smoothly with a minimum of bottlenecks. Crackdowns don’t just fail to create that order on their own; they siphon away the resources that could be used to improve processing and efficiency.”
Parents with children comprised 40 percent of border crossers in recent months. They have generally been released to await immigration court hearings on their asylum applications. Now they will be denied hearings are sent back across the border within days.
[New York Times] “Advocates warn that [the executive order] could have dangerous repercussions, making parents more likely to separate from their children or send them alone to the border, because unaccompanied minors are exempt from the new policy.
“The vast majority of families seeking asylum are from Central America and Mexico, which places them in a category described in the memo as ‘easily removable,’ akin to single adults from those regions. …
“[T]he new border policy makes no distinction between how families and single adults who enter the country illegally are handled, erasing the perceived advantage of arriving as a family.
“Instead, families would be prioritized for expedited removal, a Biden administration official said, asking for anonymity to discuss the executive action.”
Could you find a lawyer within four hours? That’s what asylum seekers facing immediate expulsion will have to do under the new, restrictive regulations. .
[New York Times] “‘Migrants who may have been exposed to severe trauma in the days before their encounter with U.S. officials should not be immediately forced into what could be the most important interview of their life without getting a meaningful chance to rest, or get any help,’ said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the policy director at the American Immigration Council.
“An official with the Department of Homeland Security said the four-hour limit was meant to speed up processing times in the notoriously backlogged system.”
At the border, confusion reigns. Asylum seekers, whether from Central America or Afghanistan, wait after surviving long and painful journeys.
[The Guardian] “The [Immigrant Defenders] law firm also represents asylum seekers in court based on a ‘universal representation’ model, meaning that cases are taken as they come, rather than based on merit. But now, people who cross the border illegally might have a very small window of time before deportation, putting a strain on the few attorneys who handle those types of cases, Cargioli said. The firm was already getting calls on Friday from people seeking asylum who were affected by the order.
“’Desperate people are forced to take desperate measures to save their lives and the lives of their children,’ Cargioli said of people who will continue to make dangerous border crossings. ‘And we’re going to see people who have valid asylum cases be removed, either to Mexico or their country of origin, because it’s not easy to prepare an asylum case within a few hours.’”
New arrivals fill camps and waiting spaces at Reynosa, across the Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas.
[New York Times] “At least 1,100 men, women and children, a majority of them from Central America and Venezuela, had arrived at Senda de Vida, a sprawling respite center consisting of makeshift tents and temporary wooden rooms, with hopes of reaching the United States. Instead, many felt stuck in limbo after President Biden signed an executive order that prevents migrants from seeking asylum along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border when crossings surge. …
“‘This new rule is bad news, bad news for people like us who left everything to reach the border,’ said Cintia Patricia Media, 40, who left Honduras with her husband and four daughters. They cleaned up a modest wooden room on a sweltering day to make the most of their time here. ‘It is painful to be so close and being told you are not allowed to enter.’”
Nicholas Kristof offers a liberal apologia for Biden’s asylum ban.
[New York Times] “Some working-class voters feel betrayed by Democrats who pushed to open borders, and there may be an element of xenophobia or racism in this anger — but also an element of truth. The United States makes it difficult for foreign doctors to practice in America, protecting physicians from competition. But the United States makes it relatively easy for low-skilled immigrants to work here and push down wages of our most vulnerable workers. …
“Are we, the people of an immigrant nation, pulling up the ladder after we have boarded? Yes, to some degree. But the reality is that we can’t absorb everyone who wants in, and it’s better that the ladder be raised in an orderly way by reasonable people.”
Immigration news 