The biggest problem facing our nation when the illegal alien caravan arrives at our southern border can’t be blamed on anyone other than ourselves. That’s right, us. At least that’s what administration officials seemed to tell everyone yesterday during a media briefing about the 1,500 illegal aliens – mostly from Honduras – who have destroyed their travel documents and are marching through Mexico with the intent of crashing our southern border.
As the administration explained yesterday, there are some fixes to asylum laws and some loopholes that need to be closed, but that requires congressional action on immigration. Unfortunately, the open-borders champions in leadership positions of the Democratic party seem quite happy with the status quo. But are we really that helpless from stopping this caravan from demanding entry to our country?
We’ve been in a very similar situation in the past, and we were able to turn a torrent into a trickle almost overnight.
In the early 1990s, we had a similar wave of Central Americans (yes, Central America had big economic problems even back then) who were fleeing poor job prospects at home for better jobs here. This huge influx continued unabated until the federal government announced that it was putting up tents and placing immigration judges and asylum adjudicators on the border to quickly move through the mostly fraudulent asylum cases. The concentration of judicial resources, accompanied by a small tent city to house the daily arrivals, meant that cases could be heard and decisions rendered in days.
Those few who had valid asylum claims were admitted for a full hearing at a later date, and the rest were sent home, immediately. This immediately turned a torrent into a trickle, and eventually the whole Central American asylum scam ground to a halt.
Given the biggest problem facing the government under law is the maximum amount of time they are allowed to hold an individual before release, this would solve that problem immediately, while deterring asylum abuse.
Why can’t we try something like this again?
Until we can finally get a permanent fix in Congress, might this stop-gap approach work?