Bob Somerby was watching TV the other night and heard something interesting:
We have this asylum law where, if you get to the United States, we are going to hear your asylum claim.... The president cannot fix that. And as long as that's the rule—that, get here and you can stay as long as you say the magic words: "I have a credible fear of returning to my country"—we're not going to fix the border.
Bob thought this was interesting because he hadn't ever heard anyone say this straightforwardly before. Certainly not President Biden.
Which.......might be true? I've written about asylum before, but usually I just assume everyone knows it's a problem and then move on from there. So in case you don't, here it is in plain words: If you get across the border and claim asylum, international law—long ago incorporated into US law as well—requires that we hear your case. You get to stay until we do.
So how big a problem is this? Here's a chart that tells the story:
Up through 2014 asylum was a minor part of border enforcement. But starting in 2015 it became a bigger and bigger share of our migrant numbers.¹ In 2018 nearly every border crosser from the previous year applied for asylum.² ³
At that point it leveled off while ordinary illegal immigration rose, and then in 2021 it began skyrocketing again. In 2023 about 800,000 people applied for asylum.
But— it's worth noting that even this huge number is only about a third of the total migrant population. Asylum has indeed become an ever growing problem, but ordinary illegal immigration is still a much bigger one.
¹A note about language: if you cross the border without permission, you're an illegal immigrant. But if you show up at a port of entry and apply for asylum you aren't. Applying for asylum is entirely legal. So what do we call all these people? I'm calling them migrants here for lack of a better word, since this generally implies anyone who's entered the country irregularly without applying for the appropriate visa.
²You have up to a year to apply for asylum once you're on US territory. For that reason, asylum claims usually correlate with the previous year's migrant numbers.
³In case you're curious, roughly half of all asylum claims end up in court and about half of those are approved. So, give or take, about a quarter to a third of all asylum seekers are successful.
Has anyone done a "follow the money" study to see how the caravans are financed? How do you walk from Central America while being supplied with food, water and shelter from the elements without a some money? Do the travelers save up the cash. Does some government agency supply their needs. Back in the day the German government subsidized folks trips to America. The Italians may have done same.
I agree-- a central question that badly needs to be investigated. Not that it would be easy, but it needs doing.
Many (most?) asylum seekers come from authoritarian states with serious social and economic problems. Today that's Venezuela, Haiti, and Cuba, in the past it has been El Salvador and Guatemala. Contrary to the right wing's belief, it doesn't take a lot of money to walk or to hitch a ride on the top of freight train (La Bestia) and travel north. If you are interested, there are a number of movies that portray trip north: "El Norte" about a brother and sister fleeing the violence in Guatemala , "Sin nombre" about a young couple fleeing gang violence, and the 2020 documentary "Soledad" about a young woman who fled gang violence.
Budget more money for an army of asylum officers and immigration judges. Process claims like 24-hour photo developers!
That's what Biden has been asking for for years.
"About a third of all border crossers ask for asylum"
What? How are you defining "border crosser"? I've been across the border a lot and the overwhelming bulk of people crossing the border are crossing routinely. A quick google search shows that 300 million people were entering the US across the southern border every year (back in the Bush years). There's no way that 100 million people are asking for asylum.
FWIW, half the border crossers, I'd guess, are Americans.
"Migrants ... generally implies anyone who's entered the country irregularly without applying for the appropriate visa"
Sorry, I have to disagree here. In normal (and I think also in technical) usage "migrants" includes people with visas or other permissions that let them stay. It's often a synonym for "immigrant" and similarly implies an intent to stay long-term.
Offhand I'd go for something more along the lines of "unauthorized," like "unauthorized entrants" or "unauthorized crossers" or whatever. Even the old chestnut "undocumented" has less potential for confusion, imho, and honestly I don't see where it falls short. Almost any term that's meant to include asylum applicants will have problems because of the system where they have to call and notify the agency post or get permission before crossing.
“Migrant” may have had that larger meaning traditionally. But today I think it clearly refers to people coming via non-conventional means.
Thank you for underlining that asylum isn't just in American law but in international law that we've obligated ourselves to adhere to. Probably or possibly the terms of enforcement leave some wiggle room, but it isn't like we can snap our fingers and just unilaterally refuse to consider anyone who wants to claim asylum.
Actually, the United States can and does simply ignore its freely accepted treaty obligations any time it's expedient to do so. I cite as a glaring example the Convention Against Torture and the US's determined refusal to meet its obligation to prosecute known torturers.
Another interesting follow the money would be to understand who hires so-called illegal immigrants. It’s one of the big reasons people come.
We already know this. It's people like Donald Trump, who hires them to work at his golf courses.
One thing we should always note is that Trump and his Nazi friend Stephen Miller never cared about "illegal" crossing. They want fewer Latino immigrants, period, because they are White Nationalists who see Latinos as "poisoning the blood" of white people.
So when the trolls show up to whine about language or say they want immigrants to just "do it the right way," they are lying. They vote for White Nationalists because they agree with White Nationalism.
Let's just be sure to call it out for what it is.
So, if a quarter of all asylum seekers are approved, that would seem to indicate that a decent number of these requests are legitimate. Has the percentage approved dropped as the number of asylum seekers rose? 1/4 of current asylum seekers is higher than 100% of pre-2014 levels of requests. So something more than "immigrants are abusing the system" is going on. Perhaps there are more people fleeing oppression.
If we stop hearing asylum requests, that dooms a lot of people we're obligated to help under international law. Pumping more resources into immigration courts seems warranted (although if that's not cost effective to process them all, we could just, you know, save money by keeping current policy and let them stay pending.
Asylum-seekers (or refugees).
Maybe if we expanded the migrant work visa program, we wouldn't see quite so many people taking advantage of the asylum system seeking to remain in the US.
What are "border encounters" if not people caught trying to cross? If the people don't immediately apply for asylum what happens to them? Are they turned back, just allowed to wander around in the US or detained somewhere? And what is the count of people who are not encountered by border patrol, that is those who successfully sneak across? And what is the encounter number for 2023, which apparently Kevin has left off (or doesn't know). The way the number has been going up it could be over three million.
These numbers give a very incomplete picture of what has been happening. The media may be even worse, although I have not tried to read every story.
People wanting to come to the US isnt actually a 'problem'.
Certain people may want to paint this as a problem, they may want to jam a stick in the wheels of the process and create problems, but we dont have to fall for their framing of the situation.
Brown people on the bus or at the lunch counter or at my kids school wasnt actually a problem either, dont fall into the trap of accepting a dishonest argument.
The problem really is that the international law on asylum is an absolute necessity given the number of displaced people in the world (which shows no sign of declining, new wars keep breaking out and old wars keep continuing).
And obviously the right to asylum is easy to misuse. The only solution would be sufficient resources for a speedy resolution of claims. Want to guess why the GOP resists the necessary funding?
Easy answer to easy question: What do we call people who seek asylum? We call them asylum seekers.
In fact they are not migrants. Migrants are traveling by their free will (please don't get philosophical here; as a practical concept "free will" is useful), asylum seekers are forced to travel by the circumstances at home.
Currently, asylum seekers are not allowed to work for the first six months they are in the country. It would alleviate social problems if they could find and accept jobs to support themselves soon after arrival.