The University of Pennsylvania is “Making sense of what’s happening at the border” in a new publication on their Penn Today website. The content includes answers from “Penn experts” about the zero tolerance policy, President Trump’s executive order, and the “evolving situation.” Sadly, it also provides a completely politically homogeneous insight into situation at the border.
Among Penn’s experts cited is Fernando Chang-Muy, a Thomas O’Boyle lecturer of law at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, who teaches refugee law and policy and has been quite critical of the Trump administration.
“Why would we deter people from asking for asylum?” Chang-Muy asked, citing a person’s right to seek asylum in the United States by mentioning the Refugee Act of 1980. “Often, people leave their homes because their government won’t issue them a passport, or our government won’t issue them a visa right away, and they’re eager to get out of a tough situation.”
The article fails to mention that the Refugee Act of 1980 defined a refugee as someone who fled their country for “fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” This is, by and large, not the case on the southern U.S. border. The majority of current cases show that illegal immigrants are fleeing because of the failure of their government, not persecution by it.
It also fails to address how the annual admission of refugees was set to a 50,000 maximum, with the president having the authority to change the number in a period of 12 months for special circumstances. This act was established in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, when hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asians, often the victim of ethnic genocide by the Khmer Rouge and other Southeastern Asian communist regimes, were seeking asylum. Arguably, a small percentage of immigrants heading to the U.S. through the southern border are even experiencing such a thing.
Acknowledgment of this 50,000 maximum answers Chang-Muy’s question of why we would deter people seeking asylum. Without this information, readers are unaware of significant limits that would handcuff the Trump administration in allowing refugees. After all, the job of the executive branch is to enforce the law, not create or change it.
Casting President Trump as the villain while citing an obscure law that the majority of people lack knowledge of, or the initiative to research, paints a picture of an acclaimed academic discrediting the president on legitimate grounds.
Penn Today is a university communications website with a mission “to expand and enhance Penn’s visibility in international, national and local news media, social media and other internet-based sites with the ultimate goal of promoting and protecting Penn’s reputation and standing.”
At President Trump’s gathering of “Angel Families” at the White House on Friday, President Trump acknowledged those victims who were permanently separated from their children through murder by an illegal immigrant.
President Trump stated, “According to a 2011 government report, the arrests attached to the criminal alien population included an estimated 25,000 people for homicide, 42,000 for robbery, nearly 70,000 for sex offenses, and nearly 15,000 for kidnapping.”
These facts are never represented through official university communications.
