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Currently, a group of Senators is pushing for major regressive changes in U.S. immigration law in exchange for supporting the President’s supplemental request for emergency aid to Israel and Ukraine. Unfortunately, now some Democratic senators and the White House seem open to some of these changes.
The proposed changes include:
These drastic changes would violate America’s obligations under international law and decimate decades-old U.S. asylum laws previously passed almost unanimously. They would also undermine refugee protection globally because other countries look to us for how we protect people fleeing violence, political repression, wars, and other humanitarian catastrophes.
UUSJ opposes dismantling or deeply weakening our asylum system, whether it’s debated now, later in the year, or during the next administration.
Even before the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, the United States had provided a beacon of hope to those fleeing persecution and violence. It would be wrong, short-sighted, and a grave mistake for the U.S. to abandon its moral leadership on this important issue.
We need your help! Federal legislators must know that we are strongly opposed to making extreme changes in the U.S. immigration system in exchange for supplemental military funding for Ukraine and Israel.
Please get in touch with your U.S. Senators and Representatives to urge them to reject these proposed changes.
More Information
Some of the possible changes are listed below. They are both cruel and unrealistic.
Safe Third Country policies make individuals ineligible for asylum if they have transited through at least one country outside their home country where they could have sought asylum unless they can show that they sought and were denied protection in every such third country regardless of the unlikelihood that they could have been successful.
Credible Fear Standard: The proposed changes would raise the standard at the initial screening for determining whether an asylum seeker can prove a “credible fear of persecution” from “a significant possibility” to “more likely than not.”
Expedited removal: The proposed changes would also allow asylum officers to deny claims based on failure to demonstrate a credible fear of persecution without allowing access to counsel or the ability to appeal the asylum officer’s denial to an immigration judge. Such “expedited removal” processes could be imposed on any undocumented immigrant found anywhere, anytime in the United States, not just within 200 miles of the border, as is the case today.
Parole Reform: The proposed changes would prohibit DHS from granting humanitarian parole to “classes” of migrants, such as “Ukrainians displaced by war”. They would also allow parole with few exceptions only case by case only for individuals who are located outside the U.S., and NOT for anyone already “present” in the U.S. (such as someone arriving at a port of entry). The Government’s ability to use the parole statute to protect classes of people (e.g., Afghans, Ukrainians) who have no other relatively quick legal way to escape humanitarian chaos would be eliminated. The parole authority would be further narrowed by stating that it is to be used rarely. Grants of parole would also be limited to one year (with only a single one-year extension permitted) taking away the flexibility available to the Government today in dealing with migration crises.
Asylum and Parole are lifelines for people forced to flee their homes due to persecution, torture, and conflict.
Contact your two Senators and your specific Representative. Send them a simple and direct message about this matter. They can still influence the process—the Senate in particular.
Let us ask for a welcoming system.