New Asylum Rule Is Meant to Save Lives
Migrants must now first seek asylum in an intermediary country before entering U.S.
On Monday, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security announced a new rule regarding U.S. asylum laws. This comes in the wake of massive numbers of foreign migrants exploiting America’s asylum system as a means of de facto immigration. It comes also as Democrats in Congress have been steadfast in opposing any legislative solution to the border crisis, as the party has essentially adopted an open-borders policy.
The new rule would bar foreign nationals from receiving asylum in the U.S. if they have not first applied for asylum in an intermediary country, which in many current cases would be Mexico or another Central American country.
In announcing the new rule, Attorney General William Barr noted that the administration’s intention is to uphold the spirit of America’s asylum system. “The United States is a generous country but is being completely overwhelmed by the burdens associated with apprehending and processing hundreds of thousands of aliens along the southern border,” he said. “This Rule will decrease forum shopping by economic migrants and those who seek to exploit our asylum system to obtain entry to the United States — while ensuring that no one is removed from the United States who is more likely than not to be tortured or persecuted on account of a protected ground.”
Predictably, leftist groups were quick to decry the new rule as “most egregious” and “extreme,” with Charanya Krishnaswami, advocacy director for the Americas at Amnesty International, claiming that it would “fundamentally eviscerate the right to territorial asylum in the United States.” Several groups vowed to take the Trump administration to court, the irony of which was seemingly lost on these migrant-advocate groups.
We relayed the heart-wrenching story last month of the drowning death of a migrant and his two-year-old child. Because of the father’s impatience with America’s asylum system, he chose to break the law and try to illegally cross into the U.S. — a decision that tragically ended up costing him and his child their lives. The new rule is aimed at decreasing deadly incidents like this by eliminating another pull factor.
