On immigration, President Trump has once again settled on his favorite problem-solving tactic: brute force and presidential action. This time he wants to make applying for asylum more difficult and less attractive by imposing a fee, among other changes.
Trump isn’t wrong that we have a problem at the border, and he’s not wrong to try to fix it. But charging a fee to those fleeing violence and claiming asylum is a terrible solution.
The proposals, outlined in a memo sent to acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan and Attorney General William Barr, are the latest effort from the White House to rewrite immigration law without going through Congress.
Charging a fee for asylum claims has deeper problems than the Trump administration’s usual lack of respect for separation of powers. The right to seek asylum, as written into international law in the aftermath of World War II and incorporated into U.S. federal law, is meant to protect those fleeing persecution or violence in their home country. Setting a financial barrier to those making such a claim flies in the face of the intention of the protections asylum is meant to grant in the first place. Saying that only those with a certain degree of financial means can be considered would leave those most in need of protection unable to make their claims.
Even if you set the clear moral failings of such a policy aside, it’s still a bad move for the Trump administration if the White House is truly interested in cutting down illegal immigration. That’s because a fee for going through the rigorous and legal asylum process would simply push people to try to enter the country illegally. Even if that meant fewer asylum claims and thus fewer court cases in the short term, the burden of illegal immigrants unable to participate in the formal economy, unable to obtain documentation, and unable to even access legal proceedings takes a long term toll on the country and renders the immigration system even harder to fix.
The bottom line is that this fee is just another attempt to fix immigration with laws and walls rather than addressing the root cause. In reality, those problems must be fixed in countries like El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala where violence is forcing people to flee. Unfortunately, there too the Trump administration has shot itself in the foot, cutting the foreign aid that was supposed to help fix problems that were pushing the migrants north in the first place.
