"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals PAUL WICKHAM SCHMIDT and DR. ALICIA TRICHE, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
Category: U.N. Convention and Protocol on Refugees
In real time, Barr jettisoned Justice Department norms and authorized the department to open election-fraud investigations before the tallies were certified. Barr, who had falsely asserted that mail-in voting was vulnerable to counterfeit foreign ballots, did allow at one point that the Justice Department hadn’t found enough fraud to change the election outcome — “to date.” But his sycophantic departure letter (“you built the strongest and most resilient economy in American history”) said “these allegations will continue to be pursued.”
Had Barr spoken out publicly about Trump’s “clown show,” perhaps he could have punctured the “big lie” before it resulted in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Barr didn’t even speak out during Trump’s impeachment, instead offering his self-serving view 14 months later while hawking his book — after Trump managed to get the bulk of the Republican electorate to accept the “big lie” as an article of faith.
Barr is just the latest in the parade of former Trump officials to wash their hands of him long after their public condemnation would have done any good: John Bolton, John F. Kelly, Rex Tillerson, Jim Mattis, Reince Priebus, Nikki Haley, Gary Cohn, Omarosa Manigault Newman, Michael Cohen, Anthony Scaramucci, H.R. McMaster and many more.
But nobody in the administration did more to enable Trump’s deceptions and assaults on democracy than Barr. He buried the Mueller report while issuing a public summary that misrepresented it; he alleged the Obama administration “spied” on the Trump campaign, and he appointed a prosecutor who is, years later, still trying to prove true Trump’s paranoid fantasy; he scoured the world for evidence to discredit the Trump-Russia probe; his Justice Department gave credibility to Rudy Giuliani’s ravings about the Bidens in Ukraine; he tried to give favorable treatment to Trump cronies Michael Flynn and Roger Stone; he justified the violent assault on peaceful demonstrators in Lafayette Square; he made unfounded allegations against “antifa” and assembled a militia-like force of often-unidentified federal police in D.C. And on, and on.
Now Barr wants to be remembered as the brave figure who spoke truth to power? Talk about a clown show.
🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤹♀️🤹♀️🤹♀️🤹♀️🤹♀️
Barr’s attempted self-justification would be funny if the consequences of his silence hadn’t been so dire. He allowed Trump to pull off a democracy-defying swindle.
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ReadMilbank’s full article at the link.
There were plenty of folks @ DOJ who “went along to get along” with the Sessions/Barr radical right-wing scheme to deconstruct justice with a series of lies, racially charged false narratives, questionable, arguably frivolous, presentations to Federal Courts, use of pretexts, discrediting of civil rights and free and fair elections, and undermining or outright violations of both domestic laws and international conventions protecting the human rights of migrants.
Others were installed or promoted within Justice because of their actual or perceived willingness to run over the law, truth, and often human dignity, to further the far-right agenda. In other words, they would elevate loyalty to the Trump agenda over their duty to the U.S. Constitution!
What, exactly, has AG Garland done to “clean house”🧹 and restore the rule of law, Government ethics, fundamental fairness, and due process for migrants? Good question!🤨
In the meantime, notwithstanding his pathetic, outrageous, disingenuous, attempt at rehabilitation “BTB” Barr should go down in history as exactly the divisive, dishonest, neo-fascist, theocrat sleaze-ball that he is!🤮
And, Garland will be judged by what he does to reject and reform the mess @ Justice left by his predecessors. In that respect, “Miller Lite” won’t do it.
This might be Garland’s vision for justice, but to the NDPA, “no way!”
Trump Judge Mark T. Pittman has a very explicit vision of the future for brown-skinned children seeking protection from “White Nationalist Nation.” EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
ThreadOpen appSee new TweetsConversationAaron Reichlin-Melnick@ReichlinMelnick🚨Absolute madness. The same day the DC Circuit rules that families can’t be expelled under Title 42 to places they will be persecuted, a federal judge in Texas just overruled the CDC and ordered the Biden administration to expel unaccompanied children. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.347182/gov.uscourts.txnd.347182.100.0_1.pdf…
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Read the rest of Aaron’s feed at the link.
Although the DC Circuit basically confirmed that the evidence produced by plaintiffs showed illegal returns to death and that there was little, if any, support for the draconian Title 42 exclusion order, the relief granted was unacceptably narrow. The order merely directed the Administration to cease returning individuals to countries where they would be persecuted or tortured.
That order is weak because:
It doesn’t specify any particular fair procedure that must be followed by DHS in determining who faces persecution or torture. That appears to leave open the possibility of DHS employing bogus “summary determinations by enforcement agents” rather than using Asylum Officers and having cases referred to Immigration Courts.
There are no limits on the Government’s ability to detain individuals and/or return them to other countries.
The standard for so-called “withholding of removal” to persecution is “more likely than not” as opposed to the more generous “well-founded fear” or “reasonable possibility” standard for asylum (although individuals should be able to invoke the regulatory “presumption of future persecution” arising out of past persecution).
Even if granted, withholding of removal does not provide individuals with “durable legal status” nor does it allow them to access the asylum system, from which they apparently would remain barred under Title 42.
Judge Mark T. Pittman of the Northern District of Texas is a Trump appointee with strong ties to the Federalist Society and a very loose grasp on domestic and international laws and procedures for protecting children.
It’s interesting, if disheartening, to compare the “overt wishy-washiness” of the DC Circuit Judges who were timidly, “sort of” trying to protect at least some minimal legal and human rights with the “in your face,” overtly anti-immigrant, arrogant tone and ridiculous self-assuredness with which activist righty District Judge Mark Pittman advanced his absurdist notion that the White Nationalist agenda of “protecting” America from the “non-threat” of brown-skinned children merited his simultaneous assumption of the roles of President, Secretary of DHS, Attorney General, and for a good measure, Congress.
Obviously, the “judicial restraint,” supposedly a hallmark of modern conservatism, was just a “smoke screen” for the GOP’s activist anti-social, anti-immigrant, racially charged agenda. That’s not news to many of us, although it seems to have gone “over the head” of many in the Biden Administration and many Dems on the Hill.
It shows once again why “Team Garland’s” indolent, often uninformed, and floundering approach to immigrant justice under law is being steamrolled by Trump holdovers and crusading right-wing Federal Judges. And, you wonder why Dems can’t figure out what they stand for and what their “line in the sand” is!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Garland and other weak-kneed Biden officials can’t decide how much of the leftover “Miller Lite” anti-asylum, anti-humanitarian, anti-due-process policy they want to retain and defend and how much effort, if any, they want to put into re-establishing human rights and the rule of law.
One observation: After more than one-year in office, the Biden Administration is no closer to having an orderly, functional, due-process-oriented asylum system in place and ready for the border than they were on January 20, 2021! The expert Asylum Officers and qualified Immigration Judges who are necessary to operate such a system are still few and far between, and the program to facilitate legal assistance for those seeking legal protection at the border is all but non-existent.
“Every day is ‘Kangaroo Field Day’ @ Garland’s DOJ!” When it comes to immigrant justice, “good enough for government work” is the mantra! https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/ Creative Commons License
“The BIA “affirm[ed] the Immigration Judge’s decision to deny reopening because the respondent has not sufficiently demonstrated that his brother’s murder represents a material change in country conditions that would affect his eligibility for asylum.” A.R. 4. As we noted above, while (b)(4) requires “changed country conditions,” (b)(3)does not. Thus, the BIA’s reference to a “material change in country conditions” and the analysis that followed shows that the BIA applied § 1003.23(b)(4). See A.R. 4. In applying the standard of § 1003.23(b)(4) to a timely filed motion, the BIA acted contrary to law. … The question for the BIA to consider in evaluating Garcia Hernandez’s motion to reopen was whether Garcia Hernandez offered, in the proper from and with the appropriate contents, evidence that was material and not previously available at the initial hearing. 8 C.F.R. § 1003.23(b)(3). Because the BIA did not analyze that question, and instead evaluated the issue under § 1003.23(b)(4), the BIA abused its discretion. … The BIA held that Zambrano did not apply because the changed circumstances there took place before the petitioner filed a time-barred petition even though here, the purported changed circumstances took place after the time-barred petition was filed and adjudicated. But nothing in Zambrano suggests its holding or reasoning was limited in the way the BIA suggests. Thus, Zambrano’s framework in examining changed circumstances should have been applied to Garcia Hernandez’s asylum application. … [W]e grant Garcia Hernandez’s petition for review. We vacate and remand with instructions to the BIA to consider Garcia Hernandez’s motion to reopen under the appropriate standard. The BIA should also address Garcia Hernandez’s asylum application under the framework of Zambrano and conduct any further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
Many congrats to Ben and Alex, who were both “regulars” at the Arlington Immigration Court! Alex is also a former Arlington Intern and a “charter member” of the NDPA!😎
The 4th Circuit decision was written by Judge Marvin Quattlebaum, a Trump appointee, for a unanimous panel thatincluded Judge Motz and Judge Thacker. While Judge Q doesn’t always “get it right,” his cogent analysis of the BIA’s lawless behavior in this case is “spot on.”
How does a supposedly “expert” tribunal like the BIA blow the “easy stuff” — like following their own regulations? Clearly it has something to do with an unduly permissive “haste makes waste/rush to deny” anti-immigrant culture at EOIR that Garland has not effectively addressed!
Another obvious problem: Why were Garland’s lawyers at OIL defending this obviously wrong decision?You don’t have to be an “immigration guru” to read the regulations!
Sadly, it’s not the first time under Garland that OIL has chosen to waste judicial resources and undermine our justice system by “defending the indefensible.” It’s what happens when leaders promote an “anything goes/no accountability/good enough for government work” atmosphere!
There are deep substantive, structural, personnel, attitude, and “cultural” problems at EOIR and DOJ. That, over his first year in office, Garland has chosen to ignore these glaring malfunctions of justice @ Justice is an ongoing national disgrace!🤮
It doesn’t have to be this way! But, unfortunately, it is! And, even more disturbingly, no meaningful improvements appear to be on the horizon! That’s a deadly ☠️⚰️ outlook for American justice and for those poor souls caught up in Garland’s unfair, broken, dysfunctional “court” system that bears little resemblance to any commonly understood notion of what a fair, impartial, subject matter expert court should be in America!🤯
Living 120 miles apart, family shares hopes and anxieties while navigating ‘chaotic’ resettlement process
Lamha Nabizada spent nearly six months at Fort McCoy, a 60,000-acre Army base in Monroe County, Wis., before she was relocated with part of her family to Rockville, Md. Here, she looks through the window of a hotel room on Feb. 22, 2022, during the family’s search for permanent housing. She is among 76,000 Afghans evacuated to the United States during the country’s largest resettlement operation since the Vietnam War. (Eman Mohammed for Wisconsin Watch)
By Zhen Wang February 28, 2022 Wisconsin WatchIn her final hours living at Fort McCoy, an Army base in rural Monroe County, Wisconsin, Lamha Nabizada searched for an interesting place to pose for a photo at this reporter’s request. The task wasn’t easy.“Everywhere is the same thing, same barrack,” the 27-year-old told Wisconsin Watch.Venturing outside into frigid air, she posed in front of a flagpole and gun turret.It was Feb. 6, the day before Nabizada and her 22-year-old brother Masroor would travel to Maryland — continuing a resettlement journey that began last August when the Taliban took over Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul. They were among tens of thousands airlifted from the country with passports, legal documents and little else.Nearly six months later, the siblings were among the last to leave Fort McCoy, which housed as many as 12,600 Afghans.
Lamha felt mixed emotions as she prepared to leave: hope for new opportunities and anxiety about moving to an unfamiliar place.
“I don’t know what will happen in the future,” she said.
On Feb. 15, Fort McCoy became the seventh of eight U.S. military installations to send its final evacuees to host communities. Four days later, the eighth base cleared out the last of the 76,000 total evacuees who arrived for the largest resettlement operation since the Vietnam War.
Through Feb. 23, Wisconsin had resettled about 820 of the 850 Afghan evacuees currently slated for the state, according to Bojana Zorić Martinez, director of the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families’ Bureau of Refugee Programs.
Zorić Martinez said serving so many people at once was difficult. Aside from housing, they need Social Security numbers, jobs, food and other basic items.
Evacuees are eligible to apply for benefits available to refugees, according to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. That includes job preparation, English language training and medical aid. They may also be eligible for other federal benefits such as Medicaid and food assistance.
Zorić Martinez said the system shrunk under Trump, who slashed the country’s refugee cap each year he was in office, which meant less money for resettlement agencies.
“We are now seeing the consequences of that,” she said.
Zhen Wang joined Wisconsin Watch as a reporting intern in May 2021. At UW-Madison, she is pursuing a master’s degree in journalism, honing her investigative journalism skills, and preparing herself for a career in health care journalism. She previously worked for the Guardian Beijing bureau and China Daily. Before joining the journalism industry, she worked in various sectors and obtained a master’s degree in international relations in New Zealand. She speaks Chinese and is a member of Asian American Journalists Association.
More by Zhen Wang / Wisconsin Watch
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Reprinted from Wisconsin Watch under Creative Commons License. Full story available at the link. Nice reporting by Zhen Wang!
Here are some additional quotes from Zhen’s article from my good friend and NDPA superstar Professor Erin Barbato of the U.W. Law Immigration Clinic, among the many clinical teams who have “stepped up” for Afghan refugees:
“The government has to provide more resources, if we’re going to ensure that everybody has their basic needs met during this transition time, and it’s wonderful to see people in the community coming together,” said Erin Barbato, director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “But that’s not going to solve the problem for everybody.”
The legal clinic is helping evacuees file for asylum and training attorneys to represent them in that process — positions that are in short supply. Barbato and other immigration experts fear some people will fall through bureaucratic cracks unless the federal government takes action to stabilize the system.
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Barbato, the UW legal clinic director, said the two-year parolee status leaves evacuees vulnerable to future deportation — a potentially deadly proposition. The U.S. asylum program last year faced a backlog of nearly 413,000 applications.
Congress has historically passed such laws to protect evacuees from U.S. military conflict zones, including in Vietnam and Iraq.
Echoing immigration advocates and veterans, Barbato said an Afghan Adjustment Act, which has yet to be introduced in Congress, could pave a safer, quicker path to citizenship. Lawmakers must also inject more resources into the immigration bureaucracy, she added. How these resources are allocated will shape the fate of applicants who have waited years in the queue — as well as new Afghan arrivals.
Professor Erin Barbato Director, Immigrant Justice Clinic UW Law Photo source: UW Law
An applicant for adjustment of status under section 209(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1159(b) (2018), must possess asylee status at the time of adjustment, and thus an applicant whose asylee status has been terminated cannot adjust to lawful permanent resident status under this provision.
PANEL:
WILSON and GOODWIN, Appellate Immigration Judges. Concurring and Dissenting Opinion: LIEBMANN, Temporary Appellate Immigration Judge.
OPINION BY: Judge Goodwin
CONCURRING & DISSENTING:Judge Liebmann
KEY QUOTE FROM JUDGE LIEBMANN’S SEPARATE OPINION:
Based on the unambiguous and controlling language “any alien granted asylum” in section 209(b) of the Act, I would hold that an asylee who has not previously adjusted to lawful permanent resident status pursuant to section 209(b) may apply for adjustment of status under that section even after termination of asylee status, provided that the noncitizen continues to be a refugee or the spouse or child of a refugee. A review of the overall context of section 209(b) of the Act, the governing regulations, and relevant case law supports this reading of the statute. I would therefore remand to permit the respondent to apply for adjustment of status pursuant to section 209(b). [Citation Omitted]
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Nice to see some common sense “scholarly pushback” to the Garland “Holdover” BIA’s ridiculously pro-DHS-tilted precedents. While Garland apparently isn’t paying any attention to what’s being done in his name, hopefully the Appellate Courts will pick up on Judge Liebmann’s cogent analysis.
Some GOP judges and super-sleazy state AGs have a very clear vision of the future for refugees of color. Most days, the Biden Administration can’t decide whether they share it or not. EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)Professor (Emeritus) David A. Martin UVA Law PHOTO: UVA Law
The court’s opinion carries the reader along on what purports to be textual analysis and implacable logic. On closer examination, however, it is a startling exercise in judicial imperialism. The opinion seizes on fragments of statutory text, taken out of context, to construct a presumed congressional intent that would be more to the judges’ liking. It ignores contrary indicators in the wording and the historical development of the key provisions. It makes no attempt to reconcile the supposed strict mandate with the historical fact that Congress went 20 years without really noticing—much less objecting to—the absence of implementation. The court also shows an arrogant disregard for the operational realities of border enforcement, including the sensitivity of diplomatic relations with Mexico that sustain cross-border cooperation—on migration issues as well as other policy priorities.
I can bring some special perspective in analyzing the appeals court’s decision. I have been a scholar and teacher of immigration law for 40 years, and I also was fortunate to hold policy-level positions dealing with immigration in three different departments, under three different Presidents. My years in government gave me close exposure to the operational realities at a level most law professors—and judges—don’t experience. One of those stints consisted of 30 months during the mid-nineties as General Counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) the period when the key reform bills on which the Fifth Circuit relies were introduced, debated, amended, enacted and implemented.
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Read David’s complete article at the above link. As usual, my “practical scholar” friend gives you the real legal analysis that should have been applied by the court. Now, here’s my “less nuanced” take on this atrocious and cowardly piece of extreme White Nationalist judicial misfeasance!
Remarkably, in their 117 pages of snarky, wooden legalese, demeaning of humanity, and willfully misrepresenting reality, these life-tenured righty judges (surprise, two Trumpists, one Bush I) give no serious consideration whatsoever to the well-documented, daily, ongoing abuses of the human and legal rights of those fleeing oppression who are subjected to this heinous White Nationalist program! See, e.g., https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/shameful-record-biden-administration-s-use-trump-policies-endangers-people-seeking-asylum
Just how do asylum applicants exercise their statutory “right” to apply for asylum and other protection under U.S. and international law if they are dead, kidnapped, beaten, extorted, raped, threatened, given inadequate notice of hearing, denied their right to legal assistance, prevented from preparing and documenting their cases, and if they are fortunate enough to finally get a hearing, subjected to an anti-asylum, anti-due-process, non-asylum-expert “faux judiciary” run by a prosecutor with a majority of his “holdover judges” appointed or co-opted by his White Nationalist, asylum-hating predecessors? The Fifth Circuit doesn’t bother to explain. That’s probably because historically their failure to stand up for human rights and racial justice for those in need of protection has been part of the problem.
Also, it’s remarkable how righty judges who couldn’t find any reasons to stop the Trump regime from rewriting asylum law out of existence in unprecedented ways, without legislation, and usually without regard to the APA, suddenly take a much different position when it comes to the Biden Administration’s modest efforts to vindicate human rights and restore some semblance of the rule of law. But, that’s actually less surprising than the Biden Administration’s failure to “see the handwriting on the wall” and have a “Plan B” in operation.
Obviously, these three life-tenured right-wing human rights abusers in robes need to spend a few months “detained” in Mexico or in the “New American Gulag!” But, that’s wishful thinking. Not going to happen! These are ivory tower guys with life tenure, fat salaries, and robes who use their positions to pick on the most vulnerable in the world and deprive them of their legal and human rights based on intentional misconstructions of the law, ignorance of reality, and pandering to a rather overly political racist appeal from GOP AGs who are from “the bottom of humanity’s — and our legal profession’s — apple barrel!” Doesn’t get much worse than that!
Nevertheless, it should be clear to both advocates and the Biden Administration that “Remain in Mexico” likely is here to stay! Despite the lack of merits to the Fifth Circuit’s decision, and the Supreme’s granting of the Biden Administration’s cert petition, I wouldn’t hold my breath for relief from either the right-wing Supremes or the feckless Dems in Congress.
Given that the program is likely to be judicially imposed, the Administration and advocates can still get together to make it work in compliance with due process. It’s well within their power and not rocket science:
Appoint a new BIA with appellate judges who are practical scholars in asylum and will establish coherent, correct legal guidance on domestic violence claims, gender based asylum, gang-based claims, nexus, “failure of state protection,” credibility, corroboration, the operation of the presumption of future persecution, the DHS’s burden of rebutting the presumption, “rise to the level,” right to counsel, fair hearings, and other critical areas where the current “Trump holdover” BIA’s guidance has been lacking, inadequate, and/or defective. They can also insure consistency in asylum adjudications, something that has long escaped EOIR.
Get a corps of Immigration Judges with established records and reputations for scholarly expertise, commitment to due-process, practicality, and fairness to asylum seekers to handle these cases.
Work with pro bono and advocacy groups and the UNHCR to insure that every person applying under this program has access to competent representation and adequate opportunities to prepare and document cases. Nolan Rappaport and I have recently written about the “largely untapped potential” of a better “qualified representative” program. Professor Michele Pistone at Villanova Law has done some ground-breaking innovative work on training accredited representatives for asylum cases in Immigration Court. But, like most other long overdue reforms, it appears to have gone over Garland’s distracted head! https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/02/02/⚖%EF%B8%8F🗽there-will-be-no-supreme-intervention-to-stop-mpp-☹%EF%B8%8F-rappaport-pistone-schmidt-tell-how-the-administration-advocates-c/
Work with the Government of Mexico and the UNHCR to guarantee the health, security, safety, and welfare of those waiting in camps in Mexico.
Then, we’ll finally find out how many of those who have already passed credible fearactually qualify for a grant of asylum under a fair, competent, timely system run by experts with individuals who are well-represented! I’ll bet it’s the majority, not the measly 2% who have received grants under EOIR’s “Stephen Miller Lite” approach!
For example, during 13 years on the trial bench, I found that the majority of those referred to Immigration Court after a positive “credible fear” finding (all of the “Remain in Mexico” applicants fall in that category) qualified for asylum or some other type of protection from removal. And, like my friend and long time-colleague Professor Martin, I’ve been working on asylum issues from enforcement, advocacy, academic, and judicial standpoints, in and out of government, since before there was a Refugee Act of 1980!
So, to me, the “2% asylum grant rate” in Immigration Court for these cases,” particularly in light of some revised intentionally overly restrictive “credible fear” criteria imposed by the Trump regime, appears clearly bogus. Why hasn’t Garland looked into the systemic defects in the EOIR system, as applied to “Remain in Mexico,” that have artificially suppressed the grant rate?
Lack of lawyers, undue hinderances on gathering evidence and presenting cases, poor notice, lack of expertise, inadequate training, and anti-asylum performance by IJs and the BIA, and in some cases kidnapping, assault, rape, extortion, and other well-documented physical harm knowingly inflicted on applicants by placing them in clearly dangerous and unacceptable conditions in Mexico are just the start!
There are lots of creative ways of making our current immigration system work better! You just need the knowledge, motivation, expertise, and guts to make it happen! So, far that’s been lacking at all levels of the Biden Administration, but particularly at Garland’s “brain-dead” DOJ. Gosh, these guys make Stephen Miller look like a “creative genius,” albeit an evil and pathological one! 🤯🤮🏴☠️ Come on, man!
As many of us have pointed out, Garland, Mayorkas, Biden, and Harris could and should have had such a system up and operating by now! Outrageous and disgusting as the conduct of the 5th Circuit has been, it’s hardly unpredictable given past performance. Every day that the Administration continues to waste by not making the necessary changes at EOIR, a court system totally within their control, adds to the human misery and injustice!
So, bottom line: White Nationalist judges get life tenure from the GOP. Meanwhile, back at the ranch of the “Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” Biden and Garland retain Trump’s White Nationalist appointees and enablers at EOIR and eschew the chance to create a diverse, progressive, expert, practical, due-process-oriented, fundamental-fairness-insistent, racial-justice-committed judiciary to decide life-or-death cases that affect and influence the operation of our entire justice system and our democracy in ways that no other court system in America does! The Administration’s alarming “tone deafness” is blowing perhaps the “last clear chance” to create a “model judiciary!” Sounds like something only a Dem Administration could do. Go figure!
One Year In: The Biden Administration and Asylum Policy
Developments in Fourth Circuit Case Law
Increasing Access to Pro Bono Counsel in Underserved Areas: Virginia as a Case Study
Working Across Disciplines: Best Practices for Attorneys and Mental Health Professionals in Asylum Seeker Evaluations
Country Conditions: From Page to Practice
CLE Credit and DOJ Accredited Representative Certifications
This event has been approved for 6.5 credit hours of CLE credit from Virginia and North Carolina. Attorneys seeking CLE credit must purchase tickets indicating that CLE credit is provided (indicated by “CLE” listed by the ticket type).
Attorneys from other jurisdictions who are not seeking CLE credit from Virginia or North Carolina are welcome to attend.
DOJ Accredited Representative certifications will be provided to those who register as DOJ Accredited Representatives seeking certification.
Zoom Webinar Information
Zoom information for the event will be sent to the email address used to register. For security reasons, we do not post the Zoom link information. All Zoom registration information will be provided in a separate email closer to the date of the event.
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase Jeffrey S. Chase Blog Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration JudgesHon. Susan G. Roy Law Office of Susan G. Roy, LLC Princeton Junction, NJ Member, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
More NDPA Training:Tomorrow and Saturday, the New York Asylum and Immigration Law Conference will be held virtually; Sue Roy and I are among the speakers, along with many other members of the NDPA.
The Dehumanizing Work of Immigration Law is an analysis piece authored by immprof Jennifer M. Chacón (Berkeley) for the Brennan Center for Justice. It was part of a series of articles examining the “punitive excess that has come to define America’s criminal legal system.”
In her article, Chacón acknowledges that “our immigration laws are exceptionally harsh in ways that frequently defy common sense.” She notes that for many migrants “the notion that there is a ‘right way’ to immigrate is just not true.” Moreover, “our country has not always honored its own legal processes when immigrants are doing things ‘the right way.’” And, for those “long-time lawful permanent residents who have contact with the criminal legal system are often denied the chance to do things ‘the right way.’”
“Again and again,” Chacón writes, “notions of the rule of law are invoked to justify the sundering of families and communities that would, in other circumstances, seem unthinkable.”
Jennifer elegantly articulates a theme that echoes what “Sir Jeffrey” Chase and I often say on our respective blogs: It’s all about gratuitous cruelty and intentional dehumanization of “the other” — primarily vulnerable individuals of color!
But, it need not be that way! Undoubtedly, the current legislative framework is outdated, unrealistic, and often self-contradictory. Congress’s failure to address it with bipartisan, humane, common sense, practical reforms that would strengthen and expand our legal immigration system is disgraceful.
But, there are plenty of opportunities even under the current flawed framework for much better interpretations of law; more expansive, uniform, and reasonable exercises of discretion; creation and implementation of best practices; advancements in due process and fundamental fairness; drastic improvements in representation; improved expert judging; rational, targeted, “results-focused” enforcement; promoting accountability; and teamwork and cooperation among the judiciary, DHS, and the private/NGO/academic sectors to improve the delivery of justice and make the “rule of law” something more than the cruel parody it is today.
Historically, as Jennifer points out, courts have often aided, abetted, and sometimes even disgracefully and cowardly encouraged lawless behavior and clear violations of both constitutional and human rights. But, it doesn’t have to be that way in the future!
Folks like Trump, Miller, Sessions, Barr, Wolf, “Cooch,” Hamilton, McHenry, et al spent four years laser-focused on banishing every last ounce of humanity, fairness, truth, enlightenment, kindness, compassion, reasonableness, efficiency, rationality, equity, public service, racial justice, consistently positive use of discretion, practicality, and common sense from our immigration and refugee systems.
Biden and Harris promised dynamic change, improvement, and a return to a values-based approach to immigration. Once in office, however, they have basically “gone Miller Lite” —preferring to blame and criticize the Trump regime without having a ready plan or taking much positive action to bring about dynamic systemic improvements. In fact, as pointed out by Jennifer, Garland and Mayorkas have continued to apply, defend, and to some extent rely on the very vile policies they supposedly disavowed. Talk about disingenuous!
Drastic improvements in the current system are “out there for the taking,” with or without Congressional assistance. But, the will, skill, and guts to make the “rule of law” something other than an intentionally cruel, failed “throw away slogan” appears to be sorely missing from Biden Administration ldeadership!
Maybe, the beginning of Jennifer’s essay “says it all” about the abject failure of Garland and others to “get the job done:”
During his confirmation hearing to be attorney general, when asked about the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S.–Mexico border, Merrick Garland repudiated the policy, stating “I can’t imagine anything worse.”
Yet, now that he is confirmed, Attorney General Garland presides over an agency that represents the U.S. government in court arguing every day that parents should be separated from their children, brothers from sisters, grandchildren from grandparents.
Obviously, that’s the problem! Garland actually “can’t imagine” the human impact of government-imposed family separation! Nor can he “imagine” what it’s like to be caught up in his unfair, biased, and broken Immigration “Courts” as a party or a lawyer. The “retail level” of our justice system “passed him by” on his way to his judicial “comfort zone.”
“Justice” Star Chamber Style — “AG Garland ‘can’t imagine’ what it’s like to be caught up in the dysfunctional, abusive, and unfair ‘court system’ that he runs!”
Unless and until we finally get an Attorney General who has either experienced or has the actual imagination necessary to feel the daily horrors and indignity that our unnecessarily broken immigration justice system inflicts on real human beings, American justice and human values will continue to spiral downward! ☠️🤮
And, there will be no true racial justice in America without justice for immigrants!
The thread running through Whitehouse’s spoken essays is that the current 6-3 conservative majority on the court is no accident but the product of special interests and dark money – hundreds of millions of dollars in anonymous hidden spending.
The special interests are able to groom young judges, promote them in advertising campaigns and then try to influence them in legal briefs, all lacking in transparency. The outcome is a dire threat to the climate, reproductive rights and myriad issues that touch people’s everyday lives.
Whitehouse chose his title carefully. “It implies that this is not random,” he says. “This is not just, ‘Oh, we’re conservatives, and so we’re going to appoint conservative thinking judges,’ which is the veneer. They would like to maintain this is just conservatives being conservatives.”
Whitehouse suggests that the model of “agency capture”, when an administrative agency is co-opted to serve the interests of a minor constituency, was applied to the supreme court. “Once you’re over that threshold of indecency, it actually turned out to be a pretty easy target. The other construct to bear in mind is covert operations, because essentially what’s happened is that a bunch of fossil fuel billionaires have run a massive covert operation in and against their own country. And that’s a scheme.”
. . . .
Democrats have been criticised for being complacent as Republicans unspooled their 50-year campaign to capture the courts. Whitehouse agrees. “It’s way late. It’s really embarrassing how we let this dark money crowd steal a march on us.”
He observes: “From a political perspective it never mattered as much to the Democratic base as it did to the Republican base because we did not have the history of Roe versus Wade, Brown versus Board of Education [desegregating public schools] decisions that provoked massive cultural objections on the far right.
“So they got highly motivated and we did not but then once we saw this machinery begin to go in operation to capture the court, we never bothered to call it out either. It’s not just that our base didn’t care as much. It’s that we were sleeping sentries.”
Whitehouse is planning at least three or four more speeches about The Scheme. Like his climate series, he hopes that the message will get through: it is time to wake up.
“I hope there’ll be a more general understanding that what’s going on at the court has a lot less to do with conservatism than it has to do with capture and, with any luck, it might cause a bit of an epiphany with some of the judges that they don’t want to be associated with what they’re actually associated with. And the American public will see it for what it is and give us in politics more opportunities to administer a repair.”
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Read the complete report at the link.
Sen. Whitehouse’s reference to “agency capture” is a perfect descriptor of what has happened at EOIR and in our Immigration Courts. Remade, co-opted, and weaponized by Miller, Sessions, Barr, and Gene Hamilton during the Trump regime, the Immigration Courts now represent a nativist/restrictionist culture, philosophy, and approach to justice, including racial justice, that is far, far out of the legal mainstream.
It’s so far out of the mainstream that even the most conservative circuits and Trump judicial appointees occasionally hand Garland’s poorly performing BIA “its head” on sloppy, poorly reasoned, substandard performance. It’s also light years away from the restoration of the rule of law and humane values promised by Biden and Harris during their 2020 campaign!
“Agency capture” appears to be a “GOP specialty,” that Democrats lack. How many key immigration officials, political or “career,” at DHS and DOJ were “Obama holdovers?” How long did the few who weren’t replaced at the outset last? How much influence did they retain or exercise? Yet, Garland continues to operate the Immigration Courts with largely the same toxic culture and badly flawed personnel he inherited from Sessions and Barr. Nonsensical? Disgraceful? Dumb? You bet!
The situation is aggravated many times over because these aren’t “normal agency decisions.” No, they are essentially life or death decisions in a “traffic court setting” that affect humanity, our future as a nation, and often “dribble over” into discriminatory and biased approaches to minority populations and rights outside the field of immigration!
Another serious aggravating factor is the astoundingly dysfunctional and incompetent “Byzantine Empire Style” agency bureaucracy at EOIR which bears no resemblance to competent, professional court management and administration.
Not surprisingly, the latter are outside the DOJ’s skill set. Shockingly, however, A.G. Garland failed to “recognize the obvious” and to bring in the needed outside professional experts to straighten it out.
Even worse, although he essentially “wholly owns” the broken, anti-due-process immigration “judiciary,” Garland has ignored experts’ calls for replacement of the current precedent-setting BIA with judges who are recognized leaders and role models in due process and human rights in the immigration context.
Nor has he actively recruited and appointed enough experts with NGO, clinical, and other private sector backgrounds to Immigration Judge positions. Further, he has failed to develop and implement a transparent, merit-based judicial selection and retention program to “re-compete” the many “new” IJ positions that were created and maliciously used by Sessions and Barr to “pack” EOIR with anti-asylum bias, often involving judges without expertise or with disturbingly thin due-process/fundamental fairness credentials.
Developing a fair, transparent, merit-based system, with outside input, to weed-out underperforming judges in a competitive process and, where warranted, to replace them with some of the brilliant and high-achieving immigration/human rights potential judicial talent now “out there in the market place” but largely ignored by the Biden Administration should have been high on Garland’s list. The process and criteria by which these life or death judicial positions are filled remains largely a mystery shrouded in opaque bureaucracy and with no input from those who actually have to practice before EOIR or who have been researching and documenting the abject, deadly failures of the current system!
With due respect, I think Senator Whitehorse needs to focus some of his attention and ire on the disgraceful performance of the U.S. Immigration Courts under Garland. Unlike the Article IIIs, this Federal Court system could and should have been majorly reformed, restructured, and vastly improved with a more enlightened, courageous, due-process oriented approach by DOJ.
Why doesn’t Senator Whitehouse call up his former Senate colleague VP Harris, who has done a “disappearing act” on immigration and human rights following her tone-deaf excursion to the Northern Triangle? Is he teaming with Chair Lofgren to introduce the Senate version of her Article I Immigration Court Bill? Some of the foregoing could be even more effective in “raising consciousness” and promoting constructive reform than giving speeches to an empty Senate Chamber!
The result of a reformed U.S. Immigration Court should be a “Model Federal Judiciary” — one laser-focused on fairness, scholarship, timeliness, respect, teamwork, due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices! Indeed, that’s what all Federal Courts should be, but are not right now. Not by a long shot!
The Immigration Courts could and should be a training and development ground for a diverse, high-functioning, practical, due-process-oriented Federal Judiciary all the way up to the Supremes — where failure by right-wing ivory-tower jurists who live “abovethe fray” to understand the reality of our broken Immigration Courts and to courageously vindicate the legal, constitutional, and human rights of abused and vulnerable migrants is literally destroying our republic.
That Garland and the Biden Administration generally are squandering this opportunity is as inexplicable as it is inexcusable! Perhaps Sen. Whitehouse can “light a fire!” 🔥
On the line are millions of futures. Undocumented immigrants who fear being split from their American children and spouses, people facing persecution and death in their countries of origin, or those being sent to countries they haven’t seen in decades are all fighting for fair play and often literally their lives in courts ill-equipped to do them justice.
“Let’s make it absolutely clear: due process is suffering,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “There’s just no way around that.”
Chishti said he sees all the hallmarks of a strong administrative law system suffering in the nation’s immigration courts, which are housed under the Department of Justice in the executive branch of the federal government, not within the judicial branch.
“It is a system in crisis,” he said.
After Trump made hardline anti-immigration policies pivotal to his 2016 presidential campaign, he flooded courts with judges more inclined to order deportations, Reuters reported.
His administration hired so many new immigration judges so hastily that the American Bar Association warned of “under-qualified or potentially biased judges”, many of whom had no immigration experience.
And as officials such as then-attorney general Jeff Sessions made sweeping proclamations that “the vast majority of asylum claims are not valid”, judges simultaneously confronted performance metrics demanding they each race through at least 700 cases a year.
People ranging from asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico to unaccompanied children crossing the border on foot, to longtime undocumented residents with families stateside end up appearing in court, often without attorneys to help them parse the country’s byzantine laws.
In a process smacking of a zip code lottery, one judge in New York may grant nearly 95% of asylum petitions while colleagues in Atlanta almost universally deny similar requests, creating a patchwork of standards.
. . . .
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Read Alexandra’s full report at the link.
Garland’s stubbornly indolent approach to racial justice and due process at “Justice” endangers the lives of millions of vulnerable humans! PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons
Not news to Courtside readers or the millions whose lives and futures are caught up in Garland’s totally dysfunctional morass! And, that doesn’t even include hundreds of thousands of migrants orbited to danger under bogus “border closure” gimmicks that Garland and his ethically-challenged DOJ continue to defend!
Sens. Susan Collins and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., introduced legislation Thursday to shorten the waiting period before asylum seekers are allowed to receive work authorizations.
The bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Angus King, would reduce the waiting period for work authorization eligibility to 30 days after an application for asylum is filed. It comes shortly after Rep. Chellie Pingree introduced a similar proposal in the House.
“The law currently prohibits asylum seekers from working for extended periods of time, which prevents them from supporting themselves and their families as they want to do. It also inadvertently places the burden of care on states and municipalities,” Collins, a Republican, said in a news release.
The bill comes as Maine is seeing an influx of asylum seekers to Portland, many of whom are being housed in hotels paid for with state and federal funds because of a lack of shelter space and available housing. For the week ending Feb. 5, Portland was housing 189 families, a total of 639 people, in hotels.
“Our bipartisan legislation would permit these individuals to work and contribute to the local economy while their asylum claims are being adjudicated,” Collins said. “This commonsense bill would help cities like Portland and their partners in the nonprofit community that are currently caring for a large number of asylum seekers.”
. . . .
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Read the rest of Rachel’s report at the link. Notably, Senator Krysten Sinema (D-AZ) was also one of the sponsors.
As Senator King says:“Maine has always welcomed asylum seekers, who have made our communities stronger and richer – but current federal laws are blocking these people from pursuing a job to help them support their families and contribute to their local economies!”
Fixing it should have been “Day 1 Low Hanging Fruit” for the Biden Administration. After all, these are simple mostly “no-brainer adjudications” — such that they can barely be called “adjudications” at all. Basically, they require computerized records checks that most high school students probably could be trained to do efficiently in a few days. For example, the “adjudication” of an extension of work authorization is estimated to take about 12 minutes.
I’m old enough to remember the days “before the dreaded EAD” at the “Legacy INS.” Upon filing certain applications with the District Office, the officer simply stamped “Employment Authorized” on the individual’s paper I-94 card or in the passport and returned it to theapplicant on the spot. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked and was reasonably prompt, practical, functional, and inexpensive to administer.
Now, there are 31 pages of instructions for filing an Application for Employment Authorization on Form I-765. Many categories require a rather bloated $410 filling fee and others require an $85 “biometrics fee,” thus making “EAD” issuance and renewal a “profit center” for supposedly largely self-supporting USCIS adjudications.
The only things missing from this “new improved process:” common sense, competence, efficiency, and, most of all, public service, despite Director Jaddou’s recent rewrite of the USCIS mission statement. I wish she’d spend less time thinking and talking about “public service” and more effort fixing the fairly obvious problems interfering with the actual daily delivery of public service by USCIS.
Lips Sewn Shut Public Realm — Biden’s continuation of Trump’s cruel and illegal abrogation of asylum laws at the border, inappropriately defended by Garland’s DOJ, drives desperate people to do desperate things.
Nicole Narea Immigration Reporter Vox.com — Her clear and cogent analysis stands in sharp contrast to the Biden Administration’s often muddled, incoherent, and self-contradictory policies on human rights and racial justice on America.
Migrants stranded in southern Mexico because of US and Mexican border policies are taking increasingly drastic measures to draw attention to their plight. On Tuesday, a dozen migrants staged a protest in which they sewed their lips together and went on a hunger strike.
They are among the thousands staying in what has become known as an “open-air prison” in the city of Tapachula on Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala. Migrants there have struggled to access food and shelter, and have reported being preyed on by government officials.
Facing pressure to find ways to limit the number of migrants requesting entry to the United States, Mexican immigration authorities will not permit the migrants to leave the city unless they have some form of legal immigration status allowing them to move freely through the country, such as asylum. Hundreds tried to escape last month, but were intercepted and detained by Mexican immigration authorities.
. . . .
The US could share the load by resuming processing of migrants at its own borders and allowing them to pursue claims to humanitarian protection, as is their legal right. Instead, it has offloaded its immigration responsibilities onto its neighbor.
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As usual, Nicole provides timely, astute, accessible analysis of complex problems. I highly recommend her complete article at the link above.
The Attorney General is supposed to stand up for the rule of law, human rights, and to “just say no” to defending illegal and improper policies. As many of us pointed out during the scofflaw tenures of Sessions and Barr, the AG’s fealty is supposed to be to the Constitution and the laws of the United States, which include treaties that we have ratified and incorporated into our laws. As human rights and legal rights continue to be ignored, deflected, and degraded at our borders and in Immigration “Courts” that don’t operate as “courts” at all in any commonly understood meaning of the term, where is Garland?
Train Dennis Adams, Federal Highway Administration; levels adjustment applied by Hohum Public domain. — Garland’s Deportation Railway retains most of his predecessors’ engineers, conductors, and crew. It’s often slow, unreliable, erratic, and subject to arbitrary unannounced schedule changes. It continues to bypass “Due Processville” and “Fundamental Fairness City.”
Mejia-Velasquez v. Garland, 4th Cir., 02-16-22, published
PANEL: NIEMEYER, MOTZ, and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges.
OPINION BY: Judge Niemeyer
DISSENT: Judge Motz
KEY QUOTE FROM DISSENT:
Under the current immigration statutes, DHS has good reason to require applicants for relief from removal to submit fingerprints and other biometrics. But before DHS does so, it must first comply with specified notice obligations. Where, as here, DHS fails to do so, I would not fault the applicant. As the Supreme Court explained in Niz-Chavez, “[i]f men must turn square corners when they deal with the government, it cannot be too much to expect the government to turn square corners when it deals with them.” 141 S. Ct. at 1486.
I respectfully dissent.
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The IJ and the BIA relied on a wrong BIA precedent. The 4th Circuit majority judges recognized its incorrectness, but took OIL’s invitation to fashion another rationale for denying this asylum applicant a hearing on the merits of her life or death claim. While the respondent was represented by counsel, the disputed “warnings” and dialogue relating to the missing biometrics were not translated into Spanish, the only language she understood.
While this case was pending, USCIS finally delivered the long and inexplicably delayed biometrics appointment letter to the respondent. But, that made no difference to a group of judges anxious to railroad her back to Honduras (one of the most dangerous and thoroughly corrupt countries in the hemisphere) without a meaningful chance to be heard.
Of all the Federal Judges who looked at this case over the years, only Judge Motz was interested in providing the respondent a due process hearing on her life-determining claim. The rest evidently were more fixated on creating reasons for NOT hearing her case. With the same amount of judicial and litigation effort, likely less, the respondent probably could have received a due process hearing on the merits of her claim. Additionally, there would have been consequences for the BIA’s defective “good enough for government work” precedent.
Of course, like Garland, none of the exalted judges involved in this disgraceful dereliction of duty have actually represented an asylum applicant in Immigration Court and had to deal with the confusing, convoluted, backlogged, and often notoriously screwed up DHS/EOIR biometrics process. See, e.g., “USCIS Biometrics Appointment Backlog,” https://www.stilt.com/blog/2021/02/biometrics-appointment-backlog/.
I suspect that folks contesting a parking ticket get more consideration in our system than this asylum applicant got from Garland’s unfair and dysfunctional Immigration Courts and the OIL lawyers who defend these mis-handled cases. And, in the world of “refugee roulette,” where human lives are treated like lottery tickets, a different Circuit panel of judges might have joined Judge Motz in getting it right.
The problem starts with EOIR — tribunals that receive deference without earning it through expertise, quality scholarship, and prioritizing due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices. It’s aggravated and multiplied by Garland — an Attorney General indifferent to injustice and the trail of broken lives and dashed hopes left in its wake. And, it’s aided, abetted, and enabled by judges like the panel majority here, who can’t be troubled with the hard work of understanding the consequences of their dilatory approach and demanding fair, competent, and reasonable expert judging from EOIR.
As several of my colleagues have said about the broken, dysfunctional, unfair Immigration Court system, the haphazard review by some Circuit Courts, and the disturbing systemic lack of judicial courage when it comes to fairly applying the Due Process Clause of our Constitution to migrants of color: “The cruelty is the point.”
It’s also worthy of note that the failure of all the Federal Judges, save Judge Motz, to make any meaningful inquiry into the respondent’s clearly expressed fear of return to Honduras appears to violate mandatory requirements for withholding of removal under the INA and international conventions. Perhaps that’s not surprising as Federal Judges have allowed Garland, Mayorkas, and their predecessors to use the transparent pretext of “Title 42” to systemically violate the legal and human rights of refugees at our borders — every day!
It’s also worth putting into context the Biden Administration’s continuing pontification about the human rights of Ughyurs, Afghans, women, and other persecuted minorities, as well as their professed commitment to racial justice in the U.S., which has not been matched by actions. Indeed, the Biden Administration’s actual approach to human rights looks much more like “Miller Lite Time” than it does a courageous, competent, and fair reinstitution of the rule of law!
According to recent reports, many of the Ughyurs and Afghans who were fortunate enough to reach the U.S. and avoid arbitrary “turn backs” at our borders, are now mired in the endless, mindless Mayorkas/Garland bureaucracy that masquerades as an “asylum system” — subject to long waits, missing work authorizations, and sometimes arbitrary and secretive “denials” blasted by human rights advocates. In a functional system these would be the “low hanging fruit” that could rapidly be removed from limbo and given the ability to fully function in our society. But, not in the “Amateur Night at the Bijou” atmosphere fostered by Mayorkas and Garland.
From “We’ve Never Been Smuggled Before” by Matthew Aikins in the NYT:
. . . .
But the plight of Afghan refugees can be an opportunity to rework migration and asylum policies for a future that will increasingly blur the distinction between traditional refugees and migrants fleeing economic and social disasters, including those that are the result of climate change.
It’s not just former translators and journalists who need help. Afghans migrating out of hunger and desperation are also the victims of the West’s failed war. Even if mass starvation is averted, Afghans will continue to leave their country, out of a combination of fear and because they want a better life. The Afghan middle class, which has seen its savings and livelihoods evaporate, will use the resources they have to emigrate. The outflow of Afghan migrants will not end in the short term; nor should it. Indeed, Afghan migration should be seen for what it is, a rational strategy undertaken by people who find agency in the midst of great adversity. Afghans are capable of helping their own communities, if we allow them. Remittances, or money sent home by migrants, contribute three times more to the developing world than international aid.
Whether we meet them with compassion and reason, or prejudice and violence, people will never stop trying to cross borders.
. . . .
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Read the complete article at the link.
The future will belong to countries that figure out how to harness the power of human migration and deal with its inevitability.
