The U.S. asylum and immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed, so says a Washington Post editorial. [1]
It points out that the current system “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.”
Given congressional inability to develop and enact a comprehensive reform statute, the Biden Administration has developed short-term fixes. One announced on January 5th related to attempted border crossings by Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, resulting in a 97 percent decrease in attempted border crossings by these people. Another one from 2022 allowed asylum officers from the Department of Homeland Security to determine migrants eligibility for asylum, subject to potential appeals to an immigration judge, but DHS lacks personnel to handle many cases.
Conclusion
As a former pro bono asylum lawyer, this blogger has lamented these many problems with the U.S. immigration and asylum system and the inability and refusal of Congress to take action to address these problems, which now seems exacerbated with the Republicans barely controlling the House of Representatives.[2]
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[1] Editorial, Asylum has become a parallel immigration system. Here’s how to fix that, Wash. Post (Jan. 31, 2023).
[2] See these posts to dwkcommentaries.com: Need To Prod Congress To Enact the Afghan Adjustment Act (Dec. 17, 2022); Apparent Failure To Enact Bipartisan Immigration Bills (Dec. 18, 2022); Congress Fails to Adopt Important Immigration Legislation (Dec. 28, 2022); Department of Homeland Security Announces Important Proposed Rules To Improve Immigration Laws and Border Security (Jan. 5, 2023); President Biden’s Argument for New Asylum/Border Policy (Jan. 7, 2023); U.S. Adopts Confusing New Program for Resettling Certain Foreigners (Jan. 20, 2023). See also List of Posts to dwkcommentaries—TOPICAL: LAW (REFUGEE AND ASYLUM).