{"id":21775,"date":"2019-07-30T13:49:57","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T17:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=21775"},"modified":"2019-07-30T13:49:59","modified_gmt":"2019-07-30T17:49:59","slug":"media-bias-asylum-trump-gang-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2019\/07\/30\/media-bias-asylum-trump-gang-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mainstream Media Turns the Truth Upside Down"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>recently ran a piece titled, \u201cAttorney General Blocks Asylum Applications Based on Family Ties.\u201d The article discusses Attorney General (AG) William Barr\u2019s reversal of a Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) decision which held that a Mexican national could seek asylum because his father was allegedly being targeted by Mexican organized crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Journal <\/em>notes that, \u201cFederal law gives the attorney general the\nauthority to overrule the immigration appeals board\u2019s decisions.\u201d But then, it\nquotes an Ohio immigration lawyer who characterizes AG Barr\u2019s decision as \u201ca\nsurreptitious attempt to change the asylum law.\u201d That characterization is\nabsurd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asylum<\/a> is available to individuals who can show persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. And the persecution must be perpetrated by the applicant\u2019s home-state government or parties that it is unable, or unwilling, to control. That standard is intentionally very narrow. Asylum was never meant to be a general avenue of immigration, available to anyone who has been the victim of any unpleasant behavior by suspect characters in his country-of-citizenship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Governments have a duty to protect\ntheir citizens but they can\u2019t be everywhere, all the time, and protect every\ninhabitant from any kind of negative consequences. Simply put, we can\u2019t give\nasylum to everyone who becomes the victim of a crime in a country where some of\nthe police may be corrupt and some of the courts may be a bit dodgy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is another problem with the mainstream media\u2019s coverage of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration policies. The press inevitably<\/a> implies that Team Trump is attempting to modify immigration law without going through the legislative process. The coverage of former AG Sessions<\/a>\u2019 reversal of several other flawed asylum decisions is a perfect example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, though, it is interpreting and applying our immigration laws as they were written and enacted by Congress. Decisions such this one made by AG Barr, and those made by former AG Sessions, are actually reversing legally suspect measures that were implemented by courts and prior administrations that wanted to avoid enforcing immigration provisions that they disliked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Congressional Research Service<\/a> (CRS) noted in a January 2019 legal analysis, a small minority of courts have held that aliens who were subject to organized criminal violence may be eligible for asylum. But even a casual look at the opinions cited shows that these were cases of judges inappropriately legislating from the bench, unsupported by any reasonable interpretation of current asylum law. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More typically, says the CRS, the BIA and courts have held that, \u201caliens who fear gang violence do not qualify for asylum or withholding of removal, and have rejected particular social group claims that are broadly defined by the group members\u2019 general resistance or vulnerability to gangs.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, far from being a surreptitious attempt to change asylum law, AG Barr\u2019s precedential determination is a very public call for the BIA and the courts to stop the irrational expansion of asylum law without any legal basis for so doing. Either the mainstream media doesn\u2019t understand immigration law well enough to comprehend that or it simply doesn\u2019t care<\/a> about telling the truth<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wall Street Journalrecently ran a piece titled, \u201cAttorney General Blocks Asylum Applications Based on Family Ties.\u201d The article discusses Attorney General (AG) William Barr\u2019s reversal of a Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) decision which held that a Mexican national could seek asylum because his father was allegedly being targeted by Mexican organized crime. The<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":13879,"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":[1450,6],"tags":[912,1524,843,275],"yst_prominent_words":[6258,6265,2530,5375,6255,2705,2582,6269,6268,6260,6256,1963,6257,3599,2030,6259,6263,6264,6267,6266],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21775"}],"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=21775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21776,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21775\/revisions\/21776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21775"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}