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BIDEN’S IMMIGRATION MUDDLE. President Biden said something important about the border crisis recently that hasn’t received enough attention. To try to ease the pressure of thousands of would-be asylum seekers crossing into the United States illegally, Biden, during his interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, urged migrants to apply for asylum where they live now, and not at the U.S.-Mexico border.
When asked whether he would tell border crossers not to come to the United States now, Biden said this:
Yes, I can say quite clearly don’t come over. And the process of getting set up, and it’s not gonna take a whole long time, is to be able to apply for asylum in place. So don’t leave your town or city or community. We’re gonna make sure we have facilities in those cities and towns run by [the Department of Homeland Security] and also access with Health and Human Services, to say you can apply for asylum from where you are right now.
“Make your case,” Biden continued. “We’ll have people there to determine whether or not you are able to meet the requirement you qualify for asylum. That’s the best way to do this. In addition to that, while we also change the circumstances on the ground in those communities, you’re gonna diminish the reason why people want to leave in the first place.”
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If Biden was speaking precisely, and if he meant what he said — two big ifs — the president is likely to stir controversy both with fellow Democrats and with Republicans.
Biden may have been referring to his decision to revive an Obama-era program called Central American Minors. It allowed children in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador the opportunity to apply for refugee status and come to the United States if they had a parent who was already lawfully in the U.S. — that way avoiding a potentially dangerous land journey across Mexico and an illegal crossing of the border. Those children would apply for refugee status while still in their home country.
The program didn’t apply to a lot of people. “The majority of the Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran immigrants present in the U.S. are here illegally, which makes them ineligible to participate,” wrote Nayla Rush, a senior researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tighter controls on immigration. “Not to mention that parents legally present in the United States can already sponsor their children for immigrant visas instead of going through this process.”
Given that problem, Rush noted that in 2016 Obama tried to expand the program to include “adult children, married children, biological parents, and ‘caregivers.'” In a conversation Thursday, Center for Immigration Studies executive director Mark Krikorian added that, “Almost everybody who applied to the Central American Minors program under Obama got in. About a third qualified as refugees, and the other two-thirds were just allowed in anyway under something called ‘parole.'”
In the context of immigration, the word “parole” does not mean criminal parole. It means the president’s authority to waive requirements and allow someone to enter the United States. Obama used it extensively, but President Trump shut down the Central American Minors program in 2017. Now, Biden has restored it, and it is unclear how broadly he will interpret its provisions.
But there’s more. The plain meaning of Biden’s words to Stephanopoulos goes far beyond a single program. He wasn’t referring to just parents and children. He asked for all asylum seekers to stay in their home country and apply for asylum from there. If that were true, and if asylum seekers followed his advice — neither of which is likely to be the case — that would be a real change in the way asylum is granted. Indeed, the vast majority of asylum seekers are not granted asylum, which would mean that people in, say, Guatemala, could apply and be rejected and never physically come to the United States.
Biden also might have been confusing the words “asylum” and “refugee.” United States law requires that applications for asylum come from people who are already physically present in the U.S. Applications for refugee status, from people in countries abroad, are limited, although the president can (and in Biden’s case, will) raise the limits.
In any event, many Democrats will argue that the asylum seekers’, or the refugee applicants’, home countries are so dangerous, or that conditions there are so terrible, that would-be border crossers cannot safely stay home. They must come to the United States first, and then have their cases evaluated while they are in the U.S. Biden’s suggestion, were it actually followed, would enrage large parts of the Democratic base.
Finally, Biden fell back on the “root causes” hope to fix the border crisis. The United States, he told ABC, will help fix the problems in Central American countries that are said to be behind the migrants’ decisions to leave their homes. People are coming because of crime, or poverty, or natural disasters. So — somehow — the United States will fix the problems of crime, poverty, or natural disasters in those countries. Even if that were possible, it’s a very long-term solution. And when a politician, even the President of the United States, says he wants to address the “root causes” of a problem, it means he doesn’t know what to do right now.
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