New way forward: Biden plan can complement, but most not end, asylum
Just two weeks out from the end of the Title 42 public health border expulsion program — never needed and kept in place long after it even had a plausible defense — the Biden administration this week outlined a plan to open up processing centers in Guatemala and Colombia to pre-screen would-be migrants for refugee or other humanitarian status, and then place them in the U.S., Canada or Spain.
Ideally, this announcement will be a prompt for the administration to double down on revitalizing a beleaguered refugee resettlement system that was allowed to deteriorate badly in the Trump years, both as a result of his anti-immigrant efforts and the effect of the COVID pandemic.
Over the last two fiscal years, the U.S. resettled about 30,000 refugees, less than a fourth of just fiscal year 2022′s cap of 125,000 and the lowest levels since the program began more than four decades ago, even as officials have complained bitterly about the flows of asylum seekers who aren’t functionally being given other choices to seek humanitarian protections in the U.S.
The commitment, made last year, to take in 20,000 refugees from Latin America in this and next fiscal year is a positive step, but it must also be said that this is a drop in the bucket given the volume of need, and it should be the administration’s ultimate goal to significantly expand that number. This program must also be used as a complement to the current asylum program, not a replacement.
The reason that the asylum program frustrates officials so much is the same reason that it’s important: it’s a way for people to reach safety first and plead their case later, if the circumstances demand it. That doesn’t mean that anyone should be satisfied with chaotic flows that force people to traverse through danger, but it also doesn’t mean that we can give up on asylum altogether or foreclose on the possibility of people exercising their right to seek it in service of a more orderly and politically digestible approach.
