If the Pulitzer Prize Board ever puts out a call for journalistic fiction, Slate magazine can confidently enter “Joe Biden Has Two Immigration Policies.” It takes some real creative-writing chops to indict this administration for being “halting and overly cautious” while asylum-seeking migrants stream unimpeded into the U.S. every day.
The story line of “immigration-focused journalist” Felipe De La Hoz is a head-scratcher. His assertion that the Biden administration is pursuing a “dual approach of liberalizing the asylum system at home while making it more difficult for anyone to actually enter it” fails in the face of overwhelming evidence. As Biden & Co. stretch the parameters of “asylum,” more — not fewer — migrants are being admitted into the U.S.
While this country’s backlog of 1.3 million asylum claims balloons under Biden – with at least 300,000 more expected this fiscal year — the administration is busy gutting U.S. immigration laws. The goal is to maximize the flow of asylees, and keep them here. Since taking office, Biden has begun:
- Releasing asylum seekers into the country, without so much as a court date.
- Allowing Central American migrants with pending asylum claims — not just approved claims — to have the State Department fly their families here to join them, at U.S. taxpayer expense.
- Using private “humanitarian” groups with obvious conflicts of interest to prioritize asylum applicants for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
- Scrapped Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACA) that required foreign nationals to apply for asylum in the first “safe third country” they entered.
Dismantling policies that got the southern border under control will overwhelm America’s already-strained asylum system, says Rob Law of the Center for Immigration Studies.
“Migrant Protection Protocols [also discontinued]and the ACAs clearly showed that most aliens claiming asylum are in fact economic migrants, which is not a basis for asylum. If the Biden administration follows through with the regulatory change to the definition of ‘particular social group,’ it will greatly expand asylum eligibility beyond congressional intent.”
Law notes that the president’s executive orders “reviv[ed]the abusive use of the DHS secretary’s parole authority to allow large categories of otherwise inadmissible aliens into the country.” Bypassing longstanding conditions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, evermore aliens will now be eligible for green cards and permanent residency.
In branding Biden’s radical asylum agenda “halting and overly cautious,” De La Hoz and Slate do prove one point: No amount of immigration will ever be enough for the open-borders crowd.