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We must tell the White House to tread carefully in its negotiations with Congress. UUSJ opposes dismantling or deeply weakening our immigration-asylum system, whether it’s debated today, next week, later this year, or during the next administration.
As of the fall of 2023, 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, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Unfortunately, as of December of 2023, some Democratic Senators and the White House seem open to some of these changes (Reuters). One potential change, requiring migrants to wait in a third country, likely Mexico, is cruel and makes no sense.
The proposed changes include:
Requiring migrants to wait in a third country, undercutting the Safe Third Country agreement process,
Raising the standard required for demonstrating a “credible fear of persecution,”
Permitting the Border Patrol to arrest and “expedite” the deportation of undocumented immigrants anywhere they reside in the U.S. and not just near the border; and,
Eliminating the use of parole to assist more than a few individuals fleeing conflicts and devastation.
What is more, the third country is presumably Mexico, and the evidence is clear that Mexico is not a safe place for migrants to wait.
Please get in touch with our President and Vice President regarding this matter.
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.
We must tell the White House to tread carefully in its negotiations. UUSJ opposes dismantling or deeply weakening our immigration-asylum system, whether it’s debated this week, later this year, or during the next administration.
As of the fall of 2023, 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, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Unfortunately, as of December of 2023, some Democratic Senators and the White House seem open to some of these changes (Reuters).
One potential change, requiring migrants to wait in a third country, likely Mexico, is cruel and makes no sense.