{"id":21398,"date":"2019-04-23T14:03:40","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T18:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/?p=21398"},"modified":"2019-04-23T14:03:42","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T18:03:42","slug":"asylum-law-myth-vs-reality-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2019\/04\/23\/asylum-law-myth-vs-reality-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Asylum Law \u2013 Myth vs. Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It\u2019s a common assertion in the\nmainstream media\u2019s coverage of the ongoing border crisis: aliens have a right\nto enter the U.S to apply for asylum. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, in a recent article, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hcn.org\/articles\/immigration-the-grassroots-groups-helping-asylum-seekers-on-the-border\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">High Country News<\/a><\/em> contends that, \u201cBy law, anyone who reaches U.S. soil has the right to apply for asylum, and anyone who can establish a credible fear of returning home must be granted a hearing.\u201d The online outlet, which specializes in regional news from the Southwest, followed its allegedly concise and accurate summary of asylum law with a blanket declaration that, \u201cMost [recent asylum seekers]are fleeing rampant violence, corruption and the escalating impacts of climate change that are making parts of Central America and Southern Mexico practically uninhabitable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Taken together, such assertions are presented as a compelling argument that the Trump administration is legally obligated to admit the <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/2018\/06\/05\/more-asylum-seekers-game-americas-immigration-system\/\" target=\"_blank\">stream of migrants<\/a> currently besieging our <a href=\"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/2019\/04\/11\/hey-dnc-want-to-address-the-issues-facing-border-residents-start-at-the-source-of-the-problem-immigrationreform-com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">southern border<\/a>, hear their claims and grant a sizeable number of them permission to remain in the United States. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s a fundamental problem, however. The type of arguments made by <em>High Country News,<\/em> and other news outlets that blatantly favor an open borders agenda, are predicated on a <a href=\"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/2018\/12\/28\/judicial-activism-leads-to-asylum-absurdity-immigrationreform-com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">profoundly mistaken reading<\/a> of asylum law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Asylum is governed by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/uscode\/text\/8\/1158\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">8 U.S.C. \u00a7 1158<\/a>. The provisions of \u00a7 1158, do stipulate that any alien who is physically present in the United States, legally or illegally, may apply for asylum. But those aliens can\u2019t just show up and say, \u201cI am afraid to go home.\u201d The relevant law is much more complicated:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>First off, an asylum seeking alien must\ndemonstrate a credible fear of <em>persecution<\/em>\nby the government of his\/her home country, or parties that the government is\nunable or unwilling to control. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Persecution is harm inflicted by the government,\nor agents acting on its behalf, that is more than harassment, unpleasantness or\nbasic suffering. In short, the term \u201cpersecution\u201d describes things like\nextrajudicial imprisonment, torture, deliberate starvation, genocide, or\nslavery.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>The claimed persecution must have been on\naccount of the alien\u2019s race, religion, nationality, political opinion or\nmembership in a particular social group.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>People fleeing generalized\nconditions of civil strife (<em>e.g.<\/em>,\npolitical unrest, economic recession, civil war, regime change) do not have a\ncredible fear of persecution. And, as <em>High\nCountry News<\/em> notes, most of the current asylum seekers are fleeing crime,\npoverty and natural disasters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While <a href=\"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/2019\/04\/19\/congressional-inaction-is-breeding-a-humanitarian-disaster-immigrationreform-com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">often tragic<\/a>, none of those conditions constitutes persecution. Aliens who fail to demonstrate they have a credible fear of persecution don\u2019t have a legitimate asylum claim and are not entitled to any further hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>High\nCountry News<\/em> claims that, \u201cThe Trump administration has tried to deter\npeople from seeking asylum altogether by restricting applications and turning\nmany asylum seekers away.\u201d In reality, however, the Trump administration has\nmerely attempted to bring order to a defective system by applying the law as\nwritten. With a modicum of careful research, that should be obvious, even to\njournalists with no legal background and little experience with immigration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s a common assertion in the mainstream media\u2019s coverage of the ongoing border crisis: aliens have a right to enter the U.S to apply for asylum. For example, in a recent article, High Country News contends that, \u201cBy law, anyone who reaches U.S. soil has the right to apply for asylum, and anyone who can<\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2019\/04\/23\/asylum-law-myth-vs-reality-immigrationreform-com\/\" title=\"Read More\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":13884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[511],"tags":[4002,5380,1524,275],"yst_prominent_words":[5376,2019,5372,2530,5375,3552,2437,5374,3258,3254,5371,3251,5373,5379,5378,2030,2003,2047,1991,1933],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21398"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21399,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21398\/revisions\/21399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21398"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}