President Trump is trying to fix our broken asylum system. While the 9th Circuit or some other activist court will inevitably try to derail him, he should fight this fight as if his life depended on it — because his chances in 2020 do.
The fantastic John Binder of Breitbart News reported last week that since the end of 2018, as many as 200,000 illegal immigrants have been released into the U.S. after claiming asylum, most of whom will receive work permits while they wait an absurd two years for their claims to be processed.
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You read that correctly. If someone breaks into the country and says the magic word “asylum,” they’re entitled to work here. That’s in addition to the free healthcare, child services, and discounted housing they may very well receive. This is the “border security” Democrats advocate for.
It would be like me sneaking through your living room window and you, faced with no choice, offering me a space on the couch until police can arrive and assess the situation. Maybe I’ll rape you, or maybe I’ll be an unimposing guest. We’ll find out within two years!
President Trump in late April issued a memorandum calling for the administration to “bar aliens who have entered or attempted to enter the United States unlawfully from receiving employment authorization before any … application for relief or protection from removal has been granted.”
That this hasn’t always been the case is shocking. The rule right now is that any alien turned loose into the country may apply for an employment permit after 150 days have passed since the asylum claim was submitted.
[Also read: Top sheriff warns: Trump’s ‘done’ if illegal immigration isn’t slashed]
That is the case for basically all asylum applicants, whose claims don’t make it through the system for on average two years after their arrival.
Anticipating the new directive, a BuzzFeed story in mid-April quoted former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official Ur Jaddou saying, “It doesn’t make any sense. If you’re going to say to a person that they will be considered for asylum and they have to wait, how are they going to feed themselves?”
Where is it written that random people showing up in the country are entitled anything? I say that rhetorically, given that legally they’re entitled to basically everything, from healthcare to housing, but it’s time to rethink that sweet deal. It’s not like there aren’t actual Americans in need of housing.
After the directive was announced, Michelle Brane, director of migrant rights at the Women’s Refugee Commission told the Times, “There’s a reason that we give people work permits while they are waiting for asylum, so that they can support themselves and don’t have to be depending on government assistance during that time.”
Wait, I thought illegal immigrants weren’t eligible for welfare? If the new policy directive does nothing else, it will end the lie that illegal immigrants don’t qualify for public benefits. They do, and they use them.
Trump gave the Department of Homeland Security 90 days from the end of April to come enact the new policy, which would put as a the end of July. If he’s learned anything about immigration, he will know it’s more important to shut down the asylum sham than it is for him to build a “wall.”
