In the US the Secretary of Homeland Security has repeatedly said the asylum system is broken. That means that revolutionary changes to the system are urgently required. Looking around the world, where so many countries in the world are experiencing the same problem, it is difficult to deny the urgent need for not just reform, but revolutionary change to the system.
To understand the issue, we must get back to fundamentals. During World War II there were disgraceful and often successful attempts by governments around the world to deny asylum to Jews and others fleeing Nazi persecution, torture, and death. Canada and the United States were both among the disgraceful countries. Both countries were complicit in sending ships of asylum seekers back to Europe where many of them ended up in Nazi death camps, where they died, to the eternal shame of such countries. The infamous statement of a Canadian official who was asked how many Jews Canada should take said, “none is too many.” In more recent times, Donald Trump when he was president, told potential asylum seekers, “Our country is full,” even though it clearly was not full and actually and needed laborers. The history of countries being asked to accept asylum seekers has not been pretty.
Then after the war the international community reformed the system and even made radical changes that worked well. For a while. Countries like Canada and the US began to accept asylum seekers. Asylum seekers who were fleeing persecution were by international law given the right to come to countries like Canada and the US and many others and seek asylum. Again that system worked well, for a while.
After World War II, as Fareed Zakaria said, people who faced extreme persecution, because of their religion, race or beliefs, were able to find pathway to arrival to their country. Then countries like Canada and the United States, became a refugee country, from extreme persecution. Yet eventually this system became unworkable. As Fareed Zakaria said,
There are two realities that are critical to turning this idealistic impulse into a workable system.
“First, there are tens of millions of people around the world who could plausibly claim that they faced persecution and the US cannot possibly take them all.
More importantly, the US cannot be forced to give priority to people who break the law and enter the country illegally and then claim asylum status to legitimate that entry, as opposed to those who follow the rules, apply from their own countries and wait their turn. But that is what is happening everyday now at the southern border.
Second, these asylum cases must be special and distinct from all cases all over the world who are trying to immigrate to the United States, because they are fleeing poverty, disease or violence. People who fall into this category fall into a complex and elaborate system that entails several mechanism for obtaining various kinds of visas and work permits some of which can eventually turn into a green card and eventually citizenship. But instead of going through that arduous lengthy legal process many seem to have decided it would be simpler to pay cartels to help them cross the border illegally, present themselves as asylum seekers, and slip into the country while their cases are being adjudicated.”
According to the Homeland Security Inspector General, in just one 7 month period between March 2012 and August 2022, the federal government released 1 million migrants into the US and then immediately lost track of over 177,000 of them who had failed to give an address or had provided an invalid one.
When the system of due process collapses as it has, it is most unfair to those who have legitimate claims to asylum or legal immigrant status. There is only one solution to this crisis. President Biden should either ask Congress for authority to use existing executive authority suspend entirely the system of asylum seekers while the system digests the millions of immigration cases already pending.”
Actually Biden has done exactly that and much to the surprise of many a non-partisan group of Senators this year came up with a plan that they believed everyone should endorse. In fact, it looked like 67% of the Senators liked the plan and were about to approve it, when Trump told his minions he did not want them to agree to the plan. Most agree he did not want the parties to come to a non-partisan agreement because he wanted to use the issue on the campaign trail instead. His Republican sycophants of course followed suit as did those in the House of Representatives.
As a result, these measures Republicans have been screaming for are stalled until after the election. The immigrant “crisis” is not as important as scoring political points.