On June 4, 2024, President Biden announced his administration’s new executive actions affecting non-citizens entering through the southern border, specifically those seeking asylum. Leveraging his executive powers as well as new rules issued by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, the president has mandated that, until the numbers of non-citizens encountered at the border reduces to an average of 1,500 daily, the entry of non-citizens is suspended. Furthermore, heavy restrictions shall be placed on the number of migrants seeking asylum, including new, stricter standards for whose claims will be processed. These new guidelines for the border have been in effect since June 4th and are expected to remain in effect for the foreseeable future.
Despite the arguments in favor of broad immigration reform in the U.S, I believe that the steps taken by this administration are ultimately detrimental and pose a threat to thousands of at-risk migrants seeking asylum.
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Addressing Asylum in the US
Undoubtedly, the issue of asylum at the US-Mexico border is a contentious, polarized issue given today’s political landscape. With many individuals seeking asylum in the United States on a daily basis, the question of what to do about the overwhelmed asylum system is widely debated. One solution is to appoint more asylum officers and judges to ensure that more claims are heard in a timely manner. Unfortunately, the Biden administration has chosen a far more extreme option.
Instead of fixing the issues of the asylum system itself, the Biden administration has instead placed the burden of these problems on the migrants themselves. Of course, one way to deal with an overwhelmed asylum system is to prevent individuals from going through it, but this does not fix the intrinsic problems of the system. Furthermore, the ones who are ultimately impacted are those who truly need asylum in the U.S. for their own safety and wellbeing. The outcome of this policy could be a humanitarian crisis for those asylum seekers who are turned away.
The Humanitarian Issues of the New Policy
The asylum process typically provides safe haven in the U.S. for individuals who face persecution in their home country. Under the new policy, however, some of the individuals who normally would have been granted entry into the U.S. will now be turned away under the new, more stringent standards for screening. A likely outcome of the policy is that some asylum seekers will be sent back to home countries where they are threatened and persecuted. As such, the new policy may ultimately serve as a stark rejection of the fundamental right to seek asylum.
Many individuals who seek asylum at the southern border expend extensive money and resources to escape the conditions and perils of their home country. Some individuals seek asylum at the border without authorization because they do not have the time or resources to go through the proper channels and file an asylum claim. Therefore, this new policy is likely to turn away individuals who have arrived at great financial burden and who had little other option but to try to seek asylum at the border.
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The Future of Asylum Policy in the US
Unequivocally, the recent actions by the Biden administration represent a step in the wrong direction for immigration and asylum policy. The question is, where do we go from here? The first step that needs to be taken is for this new policy to be reversed. It is detrimental to the safety and wellbeing of asylum seekers, and it does nothing to solve the critical issues of the asylum system itself.
The second step is new federal legislation that addresses the issue of asylum at the southern border. Federal legislation will offer a more permanent solution to the existent problems of the overwhelmed asylum system. In particular, the legislation should provide for more asylum officers and judges to assist in dealing with the high volume of asylum cases. This is how we deal with an overwhelmed asylum system. Not by detrimentally impacting asylum seekers, but rather, by ensuring that we have the framework to account for large numbers of asylum seekers.
It is worth noting that a bill titled the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2024 would have incorporated these features and was considered by Congress earlier However, it never came to a vote in both chambers. The failure of this bill catalyzed the Biden administration’s current course of action, albeit a flawed one, to deal with the issues of asylum at the US-Mexico border. Ultimately, we must call upon our lawmakers to be bipartisan and come up with an improved solution for the asylum issue. As a nation of migrants, we can and must do better.
