During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised to restore America’s commitment to welcoming people fleeing persecution, after Donald Trump spent four years restricting it. However, two years into his presidency, Mr. Biden is doing the opposite by crafting a new system designed to limit the waves of asylum seekers pressuring the southern border.
Biden’s Reversal and Political Shift
Mr. Biden’s reversal reflects a broader political shift. In the three years that the U.S. employed Title 42, a pandemic-era measure that made it possible to turn away people seeking asylum at the southern border, lawmakers in both parties have grown increasingly comfortable with a future in which the decades-long right to cross America’s border to seek refuge from persecution is no longer sacrosanct.
New Measures to Mimic Title 42
Once the public-health measure ends on Thursday, Mr. Biden’s administration is planning to replace it with a set of new measures meant to mimic Title 42. Migrants who cross into the U.S. illegally, which asylum seekers are explicitly permitted to do under existing laws, will be quickly subjected to a higher asylum standard that is designed for most people not to clear. Those who fail will be deported to their home countries or back to Mexico, which has agreed to keep taking them.
Preparations for Larger Numbers of Migrants
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on CBS Sunday that the administration expected „larger numbers at first“ of migrants at the border over the coming weeks, adding that preparations had been underway for more than a year and a half. Mr. Mayorkas cited plans to create „lawful, safe, orderly pathways before they reach the border.“ This includes turning away migrants who arrive illegally and banning them from entry for years. „If you do not qualify for relief, you will be removed quickly. And you will face a bar of at least five years to admission,“ he said.
Controlling an Unruly Situation at the Southern Border
The new approach is the latest effort by several successive administrations to control what has become an unruly situation at the southern border, which has only worsened after the pandemic with an economic downturn across Latin America and tightening autocracies across the region. Mr. Biden moved toward Republicans in accepting that far too many migrants were using the asylum pathway and that reverting back to the pre-pandemic rules would only perpetuate the problem. Before Title 42, the idea of a Democrat championing such a significant rollback of the nation’s humanitarian obligations would have been unthinkable. The modern asylum system was enacted in the aftermath.