If you think it’s unfair for would-be concertgoers to have to go through services like Ticketmaster, you might be shocked to learn that the Biden administration has issued a rule to force would-be asylum-seekers who transited through more than one country without being rejected for asylum there first to use the government’s own glitchy app to reserve slots to apply for asylum.
A similar rule issued by the Trump administration in 2019 did not survive court scrutiny, having been enjoined and then vacated by separate district courts. President Joe Biden’s contention that his policy is substantively different because it’s not a prohibition but a rebuttable presumption of ineligibility is basically only parsable by lawyers and makes little difference on the ground.
The rule, which is currently in a notice and comment period through March 27, is likely to get struck down by the courts, just like its predecessor. More broadly, the attempt to simply switch one type of heavy-handed asylum restriction for another is a detestable capitulation to the Trump approach of managing humanitarian migration by doing whatever possible to end most of it, despite Biden’s early and frequent assurances that his presidency would be a clean break from his predecessor.
Obviously, Biden is worried about the logistical challenges of handling border processing in a post-Title 42 era, given that the Trump policy is slated to end along with the COVID-19 emergency declaration on May 11. It’s an undisputed challenge and one that countless thinkers and analysts including this very board have weighed in on how to best handle.
These include a nationwide program for connecting asylum-seekers to states and localities eager to receive them and providing transport (as opposed to leaving it to chaotic and often politically motivated local busing efforts) and rebuilding the collapsed refugee system to process people abroad before they are forced to show up at the border. They should not include simply stepping away from our humanitarian obligations and the protections guaranteed by U.S. law.
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