The rule flouted longstanding asylum laws
Judge to Trump: no you can’t.
A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to resume accepting asylum claims from migrants no matter where or how they entered the United States, dealing at least a temporary setback to the president’s attempt to clamp down on a huge wave of Central Americans crossing the border.
Judge Jon S. Tigar of the United States District Court in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order that blocks the government from carrying out a new rule that denies protections to people who enter the country illegally. The order, which suspends the rule until the case is decided by the court, applies nationally.
“Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” Mr. Tigar wrote in his order.
I hear a chorus of Republicans in Congress…”What? Who, us? No we didn’t! That was that other Congress! We totally want Trump to drop the hammer on asylum seekers. It’s the American way!”
As a caravan of several thousand people journeyed toward the Southwest border, President Trump signed a proclamation on Nov. 9 that banned migrants from applying for asylum if they failed to make the request at a legal checkpoint. Only those who entered the country through a port of entry would be eligible, he said, invoking national security powers to protect the integrity of the United States borders.
Within days, the administration submitted a rule to the federal register, letting it go into effect immediately and without the customary period for public comment.
He wants to be an absolute ruler.
But the rule overhauled longstanding asylum laws that ensure people fleeing persecution can seek safety in the United States, regardless of how they entered the country. Advocacy groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union, swiftly sued the administration for effectively introducing what they deemed an asylum ban.
It may go to the Supreme Court, which is now well packed with reactionaries.
It seems likely that some refugees would be in risk of their lives if they go through the channels, effectively announcing that they are trying to leave the jurisdiction of whatever brutal ruler they might be fleeing. In some cases, it is almost certainly risky to go through legal channels.
There is no easy answer to this problem.
Refugee ‘push’ factors are poverty and repression in the refugees’ countries of origin. ‘Pull’ factors are lack of same in the country of preferred destination. The last time I looked, there were 65 million refugees and internally displaced people on the UN High Commission waiting list. But neither the UNHCR nor international law allow refugees to choose their country of final settlement. Understandably, refugees prefer a country of final settlement as least politically and economically like their country of origin as possible, and also one where there is an established population which shares their own language and culture. Thus urban and suburban communities (‘ghettoes’) start forming.
Continental Australia is a multicultural liberal democracy. It ticks a lot of refugee boxes, and is the preferred destination for asylum-seekers who generally hail from the Islamic parts of the world. They mainly fly to Indonesia and there engage the services of a ‘people smuggler’ who will make a deal to take them, for a fee many multiples of the plane fare, to Australia. Border security forces have little trouble spotting them on the high seas and intercepting them. So they finish up in refugee camps like Manus Island and Nauru waiting for some deal to be done that can relocate them.
There is bipartisan agreement in Australia o this matter. “If you come illegally by boat, you will never be admitted to Australia” is the message proclaimed. Only the Greens party, with 10.2% of the national vote, have a refugee policy that amounts to open borders.
There is no easy solution. Few countries in the world have open borders, and those that do (eg Somalia) do not have ‘pull’ factors.
That ‘huge wave’ of Central Americans is an empty meme. That a body of people are making the trip en masse isn’t a significant increase in the total number of migrants and refugees. US policy simultaneously encourages and criminalizes immigration. We’ve been dependent upon the supply of cheap labor, and keeping migrants on the outside of the law keeps the price down.