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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27781 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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[giant nitpick below]

They typically can meet the as-written standards of Asylum law, the problem is that those standards were written with a very different intent.

Part of the awkwardness is that they don't, but probably should, at least under progressive assumptions. The federal definition of 'refugee', which asylum requests operate, is :

(A) any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, or

(B) in such special circumstances as the President after appropriate consultation (as defined in section 1157(e) of this title) may specify, any person who is within the country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, within the country in which such person is habitually residing, and who is persecuted or who has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

So fleeing El Salvador because random gangs try to murder people every day because they're not wearing the right tattoos is outside of the definition of asylum. Which is kinda bad as a policy! Even for the central case of "Nazis trying to kill you", it doesn't cover everything (and not just the obvious political exception); modern-day asylum-seekers are jumping through a mess of hard-to-define feelings in front of a judge that has nearly no ability to seriously verify any claims.

As a result, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1990, which among other things created a new category of Temporary Protected Status, largely focused around the then-present Salvadoran Civil War. These are specifically not refugee status, either under federal or international law, but allowed nonimmigrant aliens to lawfully reside in the United States and maintain work authorizations. But while TPS aliens could theoretically be required to return to their home country after some time, Ramos and difficulty deporting former-TPS holders from the few countries where TPS has ended show the limits of that policy, as does the increasing breadth that Democratic governments are willing to extend TPS for.

But you're only eligible for TPS if you were in the United States before the date that your home country was given TPS. So that's a mess, too.

So fleeing El Salvador because random gangs try to murder people every day because they're not wearing the right tattoos is outside of the definition of asylum.

This was changed by the Biden administration several years ago.

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