The most insufferable candidate of 2020 continues to harp on President Trump’s immigration policies in the hopes of reviving his plummeting poll numbers. This time, he is deeming the administration’s updated asylum policy as “racist.”
Trump’s policy on asylum seekers isn’t only racist, it’s cruel—preventing some of the world’s most desperate and vulnerable human beings from finding safety. With its decision today, The Supreme Court has put lives in danger. https://t.co/LjovIoudRv
— Beto O’Rourke (@BetoORourke) September 11, 2019
Trump’s executive order would effectively enforce the Safe Third Country policy he’s spent many months trying to negotiate with Mexico. The policy doesn’t bar refugees from applying for asylum in America; it simply dictates that asylum seekers may not apply in the United States if they’ve already traveled through one or many other countries.
The Supreme Court overruled an injunction from the Ninth Circuit Court that had blocked Trump from enacting his order, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissenting. The case isn’t closed, but for now, the executive branch is allowed to enforce its asylum policy. Beto O’Rourke views this as a big problem — or at least, he views his anemic poll numbers as a big problem — and so it’s time to denounce this fairly common legal standard as racist.
O’Rourke is saying that a policy that allows Mexicans to apply for asylum but not Salvadorans who travel through the Northern Triangle and then Mexico is racist. Got it.
In that case, our northern border must also be racist, seeing as we have a Safe Third Country agreement with the Great White North. Such a policy makes obvious sense. Applying for asylum is a last resort, not a walk through a global grocery store where seekers get to pick and choose whatever country they wish to come to. Lost in our increasingly inane border debate is the clear differentiation between those foreigners applying for legal immigrant status — an elective choice in search of some degree of permanence — and those applying for asylum, an emergency grant of refuge from government persecution based on demographic, social, or political reasons.
So under the new Trump policy, a Mexican activist fearful of government retaliation can still apply for asylum in the U.S. but a Guatemalan national would have to apply for asylum in Mexico, because that’s the first safe country that person will have passed through.
Thanks to congressional Democrats refusing to pass the funding increases required to expedite court hearings and humanely house the influx of immigrants surging at our border, we need some mechanism to disincentive the very large number of dishonest asylum claims being lodged for the sole purpose of getting a foothold in the U.S. Asylum is only for those escaping an immediate threat, not for those merely wanting to circumvent our legal immigration system. This is probably the single most effective way to do that.
