🤯YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING! — Bumbling  Administration “Cans” One Of Few Positive Changes In Asylum Adjudication Process!

 

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-04-12/biden-asylum-processing-rule-pause

Hamed Aleaziz in the LA Times:

The Biden administration will pause its signature effort to reform asylum processing at the border, Department of Homeland Security officials confirmed Wednesday.

The so-called asylum processing rule, which the administration launched with great fanfare in 2022, allowed asylum officers to grant and deny asylum to migrants at the southern border.

Administration officials say the pause is a temporary measure designed to ensure that the country’s immigration agencies are prepared for a potential increase in border crossings after the end of Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that allows border agents to quickly turn back migrants.

But critics say the pause signals President Biden’s latest move away from reforming the asylum process and back toward Trump-style restrictions at the southern border.

. . . .

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Read Hamed’s complete’s article at the link.

Like the term “temporary,” a “pause” is a bureaucratic “term of art” used to deflect attention from what’s really happening. “Pauses” can last indefinitely. If, after two years to work on it, and touting it as a transformational change, the Biden Administration can’t put this fairly straightforward “no brainer” change into effect, it’s not obvious what the “right time” would be!

Granting much more asylum at the AO level nearer to the time of initial encounter is one way of gaining “leverage” and avoiding the EOIR backlog — without stomping on anyone’s rights!  The latter is key! 

I think most experts would say that it should have been much easier to implement this positive change than some of the new, tone-deaf, bone-headed “proposed restrictions” on asylum, re-instituting dehumanizing and problematic “family detention,” and removing 30,000 non-Mexicans per month to potential danger, exploitation, and death in Mexico. These moves are guaranteed to provoke strong opposition as well as generating some rather unhappy publicity when  the situation in Mexico gets out of control, as it inevitably will.🏴‍☠️

Remember folks, the Biden Administration claimed a year ago that it wanted to terminate Title 42 at the border. After an additional year, they still don’t have a plan for following the law! No wonder some critics perceived that the Biden Administration was actually relieved when a right-wing Federal Judge abused his authority to block the ending of Title 42.

Instead of preparing, planning, and “knocking some heads” within the bureaucracy, the Administration has squandered the last year thinking up new anti-asylum gimmicks, rather than making the long-overdue changes at EOIR, the Asylum Office, and the Refugee Program necessary to admit refugees legally, robustly, and timely — in other words to restore the rule of law as they had promised.

Oh, for some competence, backbone, and leadership in the Biden Administration’s immigration policy bureaucracy! Never has America needed the Ambassadorial Level position of Refugee Coordinator more than now! Unfortunately, that important role established by the Refugee Act of 1980 was “swallowed and digested” by a hostile bureaucracy years ago. Alex Aleinikoff, where are you when your country needs you?

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-13-23