The Left Seeks Removal of Any and All Controls on Asylum

September 17, 2021

By Dale Wilcox

One might assume that even the most radical fringes of the American Left would be fairly content about the state of things in this country today, particularly on immigration. After all, the Biden administration has given them pretty much everything they wanted to erode our borders and the rule of law.

Any such assumption would be incorrect, as anti-borders forces are pushing like never before for even more extremist policies to transform this country into a place most people would not recognize or desire to live.

The most recent example of this is took place in the U.S. District Court of Southern California. An Obama-appointed judge ruled that the government’s “metering” policy of turning back asylum-seekers to points of entry in Mexico to be unconstitutional.

While this may sound like another garden-variety immigration case in federal court, it represents a sharp detour from both policy and the government’s approach to immigration.

The defendants in the case, thirteen asylum-seekers with an anti-borders legal group represented by the disgraced and radical left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center, made the case that the government’s actions were a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a federal statute that governs the administrative actions of the federal government.  

When Senator Pat McCarran introduced the APA bill to Congress in 1945, he described it as “a bill of rights for the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated” by federal government agencies. Notice that he did not mention the act was for millions of foreign nationals seeking to move to the United States. Yet this act is now being used by the anti-borders left to radically change U.S. asylum policy.

A far more relevant source for such policy would be the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the current federal immigration law enacted by Congress. As the government stated in the recent case, the INA provides no private right of action for such claims by asylum-seekers. Given this considerable roadblock, the plaintiffs were forced to do a work-around and claim the APA is the relevant statute in the case. That an Obama-appointed judge in a court selected by the plaintiffs agreed with this claim is not the final word in the case.

Countering the claim that the metering policy was a denial of justice to the asylum-seekers, the defendants responded that the policy represented only a delay in hearing the cases. A possible reason for that delay may be that the Biden administration has worked diligently to water-down the criteria for asylum-seekers while simultaneously opening up our border to unprecedented numbers of foreign nationals. As evidenced by news videos earlier this year, this has caused our immigration structure to be completely overwhelmed and normal timelines for the execution of immigration policy to be greatly delayed. So the anti-borders left creates a massive problem, then complains that delays caused by the problem are excessive.

It is also relevant here that asylum fraud has become prevalent at the border and is in need of a solution more responsible than simply allowing almost everyone to enter. We know that asylum fraud is a problem because more than 70 percent of those seeking asylum have their claims rejected. This can also be seen in the abundant number of cases where asylum seekers have been coached by immigration lawyers, human trafficking cartels and others to embellish stories to qualify for asylum.

Those anti-borders legal groups and cartels have become very adept at identifying the weaknesses in U.S. immigration policy, and exploiting them to push greater numbers across the border. They have seen how asylum policy is open for exploitation to achieve their goals.

At a time when we need strength and protection from our leaders, we get the opposite from the current administration. Asylum is a noble policy designed to help people with very specific problems of persecution in their homelands by oppressive governments. Over time, the Left has tried to broaden the criteria for asylum to absurd levels.

We now essentially have economic asylum, people trying to enter through the asylum process because they seek better work in the U.S. There are also more claims of people seeking asylum on the grounds of gang violence and domestic violence. While those may be valid reasons to want to leave a town or country, they are not the problems for which asylum exists to remedy.  

None of this apparently matters to the forces that demand a borderless America. To them, immigration law exists not to serve the best interests of America, but to allow a seemingly endless number of non-Americans to relocate here, no matter the reason or impact on the citizenry. Our elected leaders will not push back on this movement unless they hear from their constituents who oppose it.  

Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.

Also published at: Dale Wilcox, The Left Seeks Removal of Any and All Controls on Asylum, American Thinker, September 17, 2021.