By Steve Sack
Reproduced under license
Biden’s new immigration plan would restrict illegal border crossings
The measures are likely to draw legal challenges. They would expand rapid expulsion for illegal border crossers but allow more migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela.
Read in The Washington Post: https://apple.news/ARS8hkdNCShagYwOQlpmHkA
BY CLEVE R. WOOTSON JR., NICK MIROFF AND MARIA SACCHETTI report for WashPost, January 5, 2023 11:22 AM
President Biden on Thursday will announce new immigration restrictions, including the expansion of programs to remove people quickly without letting them seek asylum, in an attempt to address one of his administration’s most politically vulnerable issues at a time when the nation’s attention is focused on Republican disarray in the U.S. House.
The measures will expand Biden’s use of “parole” authority to allow 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela to come to the United States each month, as long as a U.S. sponsor applies for them first. But those who attempt to migrate through the region without authorization will risk rapid expulsion to Mexico, as the administration plans to expand its use of the pandemic-era Title 42 public health policy. Mexico has agreed to take back 30,000 border-crossers from those nations each month, U.S. officials told reporters during a briefing Thursday morning.
The measures, which are likely to draw legal challenges from immigration advocacy groups,”will expand and expedite legal pathways for orderly migration and result in new consequences for those who fail to use those legal pathways,” the White House announced.
Biden, who has said he will seek reelection in 2024, is contending with the political and operational fallout of two consecutive years of record numbers of migrants taken into custody at the Mexican border, in part because of his more welcoming policies.
Before taking office, Biden said he wanted an orderly system, not “2 million people on our border.” The number of border apprehensions jumped to 1.7 million during his first year in the White House, however, and soared to nearly 2.4 million in his second year. Biden campaigned on the promise that his administration’s immigration system would be “safe, orderly and humane”; his pivot toward amped up enforcement suggests the White House sees immigration as a 2024 liability.
The administration’s solution is legally thorny and will likely anger immigration advocates and even some Democrats — and will probably do little to silence Biden’s Republican critics.
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Read the complete story at the link:
- Biden’s plan effectively imposes arbitrary geographic and ideological restrictions on those seeking protection — something that Congress specifically intended to eliminate when enacting the Refugee Act of 1980;
- Biden’s plan leaves out asylum seekers and refugees from the Northern Triangle, some of those most in need of protection;
- It imposes arbitrary and illegal numerical limits on those who might otherwise seek asylum;
- It continues the illegal and expanded use of Title 42 as a border enforcement mechanism having nothing whatsoever to do with public health — a position that the Administration itself has refuted in Federal Court all the way up to the Supremes;
- It leaves those “paroled” in limbo with no clear path to legalization in the U.S., other than perhaps eventually applying for asylum in overloaded and often biased system with a backlog of many years;
- Any future path to legal status for these parolees would require legislation agreed to by the GOP — not likely to happen — thus making these individuals “bargaining chips” for nativists seeking further restrictions on legal immigration and the right of asylum;
- The “mass use” of parole at a rate of 30,000/month appears a direct violation of section 212(d)(5) of the INA, as amended by the Refugee Act of 1980, which specifically intended to end the “mass use” of parole as a substitute for admitting refugees under the legal framework set up by the Refugee Act of 1980, as amended.
Here’s a “spot on” comment by Margaret Cargioli from the Post article:
Margaret Cargioli, a lawyer with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center said the program was effectively screening out migrants who lack U.S. connections or money to buy airplane tickets. She said Title 42 was “put in place by a racist and xenophobic administration” bent on stopping immigration, not protecting public health.
“It really does go against the nature of … ‘My life is in danger. I need to get out,’ ” she said at a Dec. 29 news conference. “And that is what the essence of an asylum seeker is.”
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!
PWS
01-05-23