It’s not until you get eight paragraphs into a new Wall Street Journal report about illegal aliens storming the U.S. southern border, overwhelming agents and hospitals, that you find the key: our abhorrent asylum law.
More border wall construction is crucial in defending America from an endless flood of unknown people coming from Guatemala (poverty stricken), El Salvador (overrun by the violent MS-13 gang), and Honduras (completely destitute). But forget about saving American schools and neighborhoods from these broken countries so long as we have an immigration system that says anyone who sets foot on U.S. soil has instant legal protection to stay.
The Journal reported that for the past five months, illegal border crossings “were the sharpest evidence yet that, despite [President] Trump’s efforts to crack down on illegal immigration, the flow of migrants is only growing.”
The report quotes Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, saying, “This situation is not sustainable. The system is well beyond capacity and remains at the breaking point.”
The New York Times’ own report laughably describes the crisis as not a matter of a broken immigration system draining money that might otherwise go to benefit the lives of actual U.S. citizens (imagine that), but as simply a “challenge” to overcome by dumping more money into free child care and medical attention for any foreigner who shows up wanting it.
“The main problem is not one of uncontrolled masses scaling the fences,” wrote the Times, “but a humanitarian challenge created as thousands of migrant families surge into remote areas where the administration has so far failed to devote sufficient resources to care for them, as is required under the law.”
That reference to “the law” is the the asylum monstrosity we’re living with. But is anyone asking why we can’t change it?
The Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas is most affected by this gaping hole in our system. Although agents there are demanding more border wall, construction cannot take place on the actual border, which is the Rio Grande. Natural geography has it so that anyone illegally entering from Mexico simply floats a short distance across the width of the river, hits the U.S. bank and finds an agent to make a meritless asylum claim. They come by the hundreds, unabated, day in and day out.
Data provided to me by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said that in 2018, nearly 70 percent of asylum claims were made by people from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Though just 10 percent of asylum seekers from those places (countries ravaged by gang violence and poverty) were granted legal protection to remain in the country as a refugee, 90 percent of those who pass an initial first interview with authorities were simply released into the country after they promised to appear in court.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, 70,000 people from Central America applied for asylum last year. You can expect up to 40 percent of them not to show up for their court date, meaning that as many as 30,000 people from these broken places have simply vanished into the U.S.
The actual text of the asylum law says that people with a legitimate claim must be “unable or unwilling to return to his or her country of nationality because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”
Notice that there’s nothing in there about “fleeing your awful country because it’s poor and overrun by gang members.” Nonetheless, thanks to the manner in which judges have interpreted this law, everyone south of our border knows if they just claim asylum, they can stay.
President Trump can make all the noise he wants about a wall, but so long as the asylum hole goes unfixed, it won’t matter.
