Tag: Paul Weber

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=e82dbea7-66e2-4617-93e2-42b7c8f8b4df

Elliot Spagat and Paul J. Weber report for the AP:

. . . .

Last month, the Biden administration unveiled a long-discussed and potentially significant change to expand authority of asylum officers to decide claims, not just initial screenings. It is designed to decide cases in months instead of years, but officials say there are no additional funds for its launch, expected in late May, and to expect a slow start.

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Read the complete article at the link.

A “slow start” = DOA! If you’re not going to use it to make asylum work at the Southern Border after the lifting of the Title 42 blockade, when are you going to use it? There are ways that a competent Government could have made this work. 

Why push for and tout a change you’re not fully prepared to implement? How come with 16 months to solve a “day 1” problem they campaigned on (for Pete’s sake), the Biden Administration is still “shooting blanks?” 

Former insider tip: There are always resources and methods to deal with the “really important stuff” in Government. I was involved in numerous “immigration emergencies” over several decades as a Government executive and manager under Administrations of both parties. I never remember telling anyone or being told “we can’t afford that.” It was always a question of “make it happen,” and we’ll worry about how to pay for it later. So that tells you where an orderly asylum system at the border ranks in this Administration.

As May 23 approaches, the inexcusable failure to reform the Immigration Courts to bring in and empower competent practical scholars with the skills to make the asylum system work in a fair, efficient, manner driven by due process is likely to loom larger and larger, despite Garland’s concerted effort to ignore it. “Expedited dockets,” relying on judges who barely know how to grant asylum, let alone move grants fairly and efficiently through the system, is NOT going to solve the problem.

Actually, a minimally competent Administration could have worked with NGOs over the past month to identify, screen, prioritize, and informally process grants, screen the refugees for COVID, and parole them in under Title 42 exceptions to have their grants “finalized” by Asylum Offices in the U.S. on or shortly after May 28. 

But that would take folks with some imagination and the expertise to run rational “expedited procedures” rather than the clueless, backlog enhancing, “Clown Show” 🤡 that Garland and Mayorkas have employed to date! 

It would also take officials who really believe that legal asylum is a right and a key part of our legal immigration system that should be embraced, not feared, shunned, and disabled. Obviously, that belief is lacking among the Biden politicos.

Expediting grantable asylum cases without having to go through the Immigration Courts was what the Asylum Offices originally were created to do. But, it appears that the Biden Administration views the Asylum Office more as a potential “denial assembly line” that will move more quickly than the malfunctioning “denial factory” that Sessions and Barr constructed in the Immigration Courts and that Garland has, inexplicably, retained in its “weaponized against asylum seekers” structure and staffing.   

“White Guy” cases, like Ukrainians, presumably can be whisked through the new system to success. Meanwhile, “Nonwhite cases” can be killed off rapidly and then assigned to “denial judges,” with records of faithfully killing most asylum cases, to “shoot anything that might still be moving.”

That process doesn’t appear geared to garner much assistance from the only groups who could actually “bail the Administration out” at the border —  NGOs and asylum experts. But, despite the human rights rhetoric when seeking votes in 2020, this Administration appears to be more committed to external chaos, protestations of helplessness, and finger-pointing than it does to creative problem-solving and running a fair, functional legal asylum system.

But, I repeat myself, to no avail.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-17-22