When I was a presidential candidate, Joe Biden denounced that with his draconian measures against immigration and the asylum the then president Donald Trump was waging “a relentless attack on the values and history as a nation of immigrants” from USA. Then he also recalled that those who arrive seeking asylum “should have the opportunity to present their case.” He also promised to return to a “more humane” immigration policy.
All this has been carried away by the wind, or by time and perhaps by electoral calculations, and this week the government of the Democratic president announced a measure that, breaking with decades of precedent, will extremely restrict the ability to request asylum In U.S.A. The regulation, the toughest in the immigration field so far for Biden, replicates a step that Trump already tried to take, which in that case was stopped by the courts.
few exceptions
According to the regulations, which were presented last Tuesday by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, you will not be able to request asylum in the US after cross the border without papers from Mexico any migrant who has not previously applied for asylum in the country or countries they have transited before reaching that border, applications that should have been denied. Except for Mexicans, all migrants entering by land pass through a country other than the US before arriving there.
Nor will those seeking asylum be allowed to enter the US (something that is usually done while they await the resolution of their cases) if, before reaching an official point of entry to make the application, they have not requested a prior appointment at a mobile application. esa app, CBP Onewas already operational in January and its operation has been plagued with problems, both due to demand overload and technical failures.
Although there will be exceptions, such as minors solo travelers, people with a medical emergency, and those facing an “imminent or extreme threat” of violent crime or other “extremely compelling circumstances,” will effectively close the doors on tens of thousands of people.
Arguments and criticism
The regulation is open to a month of public comments. It will enter into force in May, and will initially apply for two years. And the moment chosen is not accidental: on May 11, the United States is going to declare the end of emergency caused by the pandemicand from that moment the Administration will not be able to continue applying a regulation, which Trump began to use, by which migrants were expelled under the argument of the supposed medical emergency.
The fear of the Administration is that from that moment the border crossings will be triggered, something that the regulations say they want to stop. And in a call with the press, government officials tried to justify that the measure was “neither the first nor the second option.” They came to say that it is adopted “for necessity“, also highlighting its “temporality”, and rejected comparisons with Trump, in addition to remembering that it is the responsibility of Congress, with the Lower House currently under Republican control, to reform immigration laws.
These arguments have not prevented a barrage of reviewsboth from within the Democratic Party itself and from immigrant rights activist groups to Republicans, who claim that it is just an electoral maneuver by Biden.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which managed to stop Trump’s similar initiative in court, has already announced that it will denounce it and Anu Joshi, the deputy director of the group’s department in charge of national policies, has criticized in a statement that “this veto asylum is, at its core, Trump’s asylum veto under a different name.”
“Unnecessary Suffering”
Meanwhile, the director of the National Justice Immigration Center, Mary Meg McCarthy, has assured that the rule “violates the obligations of the United States under the national and international humanitarian lawwhich guarantees access to protection for people fleeing persecution”, and specifically pointed to US federal legislation that establishes that the right to request asylum does not depend on a person’s status or the way in which they enter the US.
“Time and time again, President Biden has broken his campaign promises to end restrictions on asylum seekers passing through other countries,” Marisa Limón Garza, director of the Las Américas Immigrant Support Center, lamented in another statement, identifying regulation as “blatant acceptance of abhorrent and illegal policies that will lead to unnecessary human suffering“.