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Today we are joined with Dara Lynn,
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senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
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I'm ok. How are you folks?
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Good, good, welcome.
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Well, I'm gonna dive writing.
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You just wrote an article about Biden's new immigration plan.
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What's new and why did he do this?
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So we'll start with the why?
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Ok. The Biden administration believes that too many people are crossing
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that most of them may not qualify for asylum,
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but that they're all going into the asylum process anyway.
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And so what it has done is say,
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ok, for the most part,
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if you cross between ports of entry into the US,
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if you cross it right,
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you won't be eligible for asylum,
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you can still show that you need to stay in the United
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States because you would be persecuted in your home country or you
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would be tortured. But they're making it harder for people to
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kind of pass through the initial phases of that process.
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And at the end of it,
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what's available to you are these kind of lesser protections that like
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don't come, you know,
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don't lead to green cards or anything like that.
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So, what they're hoping will happen is that they'll be able
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to deport a lot of people faster and that,
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that will send a message to people who might want to come
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in future that they shouldn't bother because nobody can get it.
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And do you feel like this new plan would work?
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even if you just say working on its own terms,
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right? Like, obviously it's a choice to say that the
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most important thing about the immigration system is that it deports people
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quickly. But even just kind of looking at that the problems
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that the US was facing before Tuesday weren't really that too many
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people were passing through the initial screening process.
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There were resource problems,
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right? It takes money to charter flights on Ice air,
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to deport people, it takes money and space to hold people
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in detention until you have those flights.
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And so what we we're seeing was that a lot of people
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were getting released into the United States,
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not because they'd already passed the screening interview,
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but because they just didn't have anywhere else to put them.
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So without any additional resources and Tuesday's announcement didn't come with any
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additional resources. It's a little hard to see how this problem
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gets fixed on its own.
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So you kind of already highlighted some problems,
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but essentially what do you think could go wrong whenever you kind
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of have a crackdown on some people like,
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rather unless you have enough resources so that every single person will
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have the same thing happen to them that is always going to
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create disparities. And so it's just going to be a little
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bit arbitrary. What we've seen in the past is that when
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you have a lot of options,
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it depends on like where you cross,
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what mood the border patrol agent was in,
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who screened you or,
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who apprehended you. And so that means that people who do
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have legitimate claims of fear might be deported,
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which would, you know,
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violate international law because the US says it won't do that.
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But at the same time that people who cross on a
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different day in a different part of the US that they'll like
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get held in border patrol custody for a few days and then
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those facilities will become so over jammed that they'll just have to
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start releasing people. So,
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you know, it will be arbitrary,
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not based on like the merits of people's claims,
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but the message that's going to set the kind of word of
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health network of, oh,
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can you come into the US or not?
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You're still going to get a lot of mixed messages.
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And what we know is that when people hear mixed messages,
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they choose to believe the ones that are most favorable to them
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which is going to be not,
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you can still get in.
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And what are critics saying about this?
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Biden's critics from the more hawkish side have claimed for a while
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that like the Biden administration has always had it in its power
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to just stop people from wanting to come.
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But by forcing them to,
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by reinstituting the Trump administration's remain in Mexico policy right now.
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Of course, that requires cooper operation from Mexico to take people
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back who aren't Mexican citizens.
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And everyone was kind of expecting that this new announcement would come
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with Mexico taking some more people back as deportees and it hasn't
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So there is kind of a reality problem with that line
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of criticism. There's also,
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you know, the criticism from the left that Biden ran on
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protecting the right to asylum and ending some of these Trump policies
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And actually, like this particular thing is very similar to
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something that Trump tried in 2018.
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And so the idea that,
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you know, in order to solidify Biden's political position against Donald
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Trump, that they're going to do the kinds of things that
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a Trump administration would do,
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strikes a lot of people as hypocritical and and really and a
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violation of the US humanitarian commitments.
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Well, thank you so much,
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Dara. And where can people follow you to learn?
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You get more. You can follow me personally on Twitter or
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blue sky at Deland on Twitter.
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And you should definitely make sure to check out the American Immigration
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Council www dot Imco im MC O un cil.org.
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Perfect. Thank you so much.
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I appreciate your time.
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