Massive abuse of the U.S. asylum system, coupled with increasingly lax enforcement of federal immigration laws in the interior of the country, is driving the current border crisis and both problems need to be fixed to turn the situation around, according to border security and immigration experts at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
“Expediting the processing of asylum claims, as the Biden administration is proposing, will not solve the problem if at the same time the administration continues to expand the categories of eligibility for asylum,” said John Hostettler, TPPF’s Vice President for Federal Affairs and former Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims.
“What needs to happen is a combination of tightening the standards of eligibility for asylum and faster processing, including swift removal of hundreds of thousands of people who have been crossing our land border month after month with meritless claims, such as those based on dangerous neighborhoods they have back home” said the former six-term Indiana Congressman.
“We’re all for adjudicating asylum claims more quickly,” added Ken Oliver, Senior Director of TPPF’s Right on Immigration campaign. “But the screening standards for credible fear of persecution need to be high, not low,” he added. “Providing asylum because of problems such as gang violence or domestic abuse will only open the floodgates even more. And without the swift removal of all those with meritless claims, the crisis the administration has subjected America to will only be compounded.”
The TPPF-led Border Security Coalition has made safeguarding the integrity and statutorily limited use of the U.S. asylum system a top priority in its policy agenda. Since the outset of its Right on Immigration campaign, TPPF has focused on solutions to this issue, including those presented in its landmark 2019 research project, Towards a 21st Century Asylum System.