The Biden administration released last week initial results from its improvised plan, announced by President Biden on Jan. 5, to stem migration over the U.S.-Mexico border: a 97 percent decrease in attempted border crossings by Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans since Dec. 11. Still, Mr. Biden’s plan is only a short-term fix.
Long-term stability at the border calls for a sustainable approach to asylum — the promise, enshrined in domestic and international law, of haven for people facing “persecution or well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion” in their countries of origin. It is a noble and necessary commitment. In practice, however, it was being rendered untenable by the sheer number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years, each with a legal right to press an asylum claim. Between those assigned to Justice Department immigration courts and Department of Homeland Security asylum officers, the backlog of cases has reached roughly 1.6 million, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. It can take years just to get a hearing in immigration court.
Instead of the selective, humanitarian adjunct to general immigration flows that the law intended, asylum is evolving into an open-ended parallel system. The backlog encourages people to make a dangerous and expensive trip to the U.S. border, knowing that — even if their asylum cases are weak — they can live and work in the United States for years pending a ruling. Even those whose claims are rejected, as they were in most final rulings over the past decade, seldom face prompt removal. Meanwhile, those with strong claims wait longer than they should.
For the sake of all concerned — asylum seekers, other potential immigrants and U.S. communities facing migrant surges — the system’s integrity and efficiency need to be restored.
The Biden administration enacted one structural reform in 2022: As of May 31, asylum officers from the Department of Homeland Security can determine migrants’ eligibility for asylum, instead of conducting an initial screening and referring them to Justice Department immigrant judges as they previously did. Migrants may still appeal an asylum officer’s ruling to an immigration judge, but the net effect is to shorten the overall decisional process significantly. The program has been slow to ramp up, partly because of insufficient personnel. Last year, DHS asked Congress for funds to expand its roughly 1,000 asylum officers by 2,000 — a staffing level that would have also helped DHS work through its half of the asylum backlog, DHS officials say. Congress funded no expansion; it should find the money.
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End of carousel- D.C. Council reverses itself on school resource officers. Good.
- Virginia makes a mistake by pulling out of an election fraud detection group.
- Vietnam sentences another democracy activist.
- Biden has a new border plan.
The D.C. Council voted on Tuesday to stop pulling police officers out of schools, a big win for student safety. Parents and principals overwhelmingly support keeping school resource officers around because they help de-escalate violent situations. D.C. joins a growing number of jurisdictions, from Montgomery County, Md., to Denver, in reversing course after withdrawing officers from school grounds following George Floyd’s murder. Read our recent editorial on why D.C. needs SROs.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) just withdrew Virginia from a data-sharing consortium, ERIC, that made the commonwealth’s elections more secure, following Republicans in seven other states in falling prey to disinformation peddled by election deniers. Former GOP governor Robert F. McDonnell made Virginia a founding member of ERIC in 2012, and until recently conservatives touted the group as a tool to combat voter fraud. D.C. and Maryland plan to remain. Read our recent editorial on ERIC.
In Vietnam, a one-party state, democracy activist Tran Van Bang was sentenced on Friday to eight years in prison and three years probation for writing 39 Facebook posts. The court claimed he had defamed the state in his writings, according to Radio Free Asia. In the past six years, at least 60 bloggers and activists have been sentenced to between 4 and 15 years in prison under the law, Human Rights Watch found. Read more of the Editorial Board’s coverage on autocracy and Vietnam.
The Department of Homeland Security has provided details of a plan to prevent a migrant surge along the southern border. The administration would presumptively deny asylum to migrants who failed to seek it in a third country en route — unless they face “an extreme and imminent threat” of rape, kidnapping, torture or murder. Critics allege that this is akin to an illegal Trump-era policy. In fact, President Biden is acting lawfully in response to what was fast becoming an unmanageable flow at the border. Read our most recent editorial on the U.S. asylum system.
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The Justice Department should get more immigration judges, too, though this is hardly a panacea. The 600 or so it has represents a doubling since 2014, and still the caseload has grown. Even with 500 more judges, it would take eight years to work through the immigration court backlog — composed of both asylum and other cases — according to a 2022 Congressional Research Service estimate.
One key to a more functional asylum system lies outside of it, in wider channels for legal immigration. As part of this, the Biden administration has already nearly doubled, by regulation, the current statutory cap of 66,000 per year on visas for nonagricultural “guest” workers. Of the additional visas, 20,000 are set aside for historical “sender” countries in Central America and Haiti. That share should be increased, as should the statutory caps. Opening lawful pathways for migrants seeking economic opportunity would reduce the number seeking to enter the country by gaming the asylum system. It would also enhance the legitimacy — actual and perceived — of the limitations on immigration that necessarily remain.