American asylum laws must be completely overhauled in order to avoid the southern border crisis that overwhelmed federal immigration officials under the Biden administration, according to immigration experts at the Heritage Foundation.
Under the Biden administration, the country was hit with the worst immigration crisis in history, with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials experiencing the highest and second highest border encounters in fiscal years 2023 and 2024 respectively, according to the agency’s data. The ensuing migration crisis not only overwhelmed federal immigration authorities, but also pushed state and local governments across the country to the brink.
A new report by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank based in Washington, D.C., breaks down how such a crisis can be permanently avoided in the future — no matter who may be occupying the White House.
“The U.S. refugee and asylum process was devised during a different era and no longer serves the national interest,” the report, first obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, states. “Rather than adding to the already confusing law and procedures, the entire approach must be redesigned to preserve a credible refugee system while removing the possibility of gaming it to immigrate for purely economic purposes.”
The report calls on federal lawmakers to limit asylum and refugee approvals to applicants who claim persecution by their government only on the basis of their race, religion, nationality or political opinion. Current U.S. law, based on the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention, allows foreign nationals to also claim persecution by their native country due to “membership of a particular social group,” which Heritage argues is an ambiguous phrase that has allowed foreign nationals to abuse en masse.
Legislators must prohibit illegal border crossers from pursuing asylum, limiting such applications only to those arriving lawfully at ports of entry, Heritage argues. Migrants should also not be eligible for asylum if they: can safely relocate to their home country, already settled in a third country or travelled across a safe country and did not first seek asylum there.
“The United States must revise its asylum law and processing systems entirely,” the report states. “The U.S. should pull out of the international Geneva Convention and re-write U.S. immigration law to prioritize American, not globalist, interests and to eliminate loopholes that encourage frivolous and fraudulent asylum claims.”
The recommended fixes come after the U.S. is coming off what has been deemed the worst illegal immigration in history. Since reaching record highs of unlawful border crossings during the previous administration, activity at the U.S.-Mexico border has largely leveled off in past months.
Upon entering office in early 2021, the Biden administration made a number of administrative changes that largely undid the border enforcement apparatus built during President Donald Trump’s first term. Among the changes were a pause on border wall construction, a moratorium on deportations, the complete shutdown of the Remain in Mexico program and an end to the COVID-era Title 42 health order that quickly expelled migrants, among other directives.
Altogether, the Biden administration took 296 executive actions on immigration, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute. Of these executive moves, 89 specifically reversed or began the process of undoing Trump’s immigration policies.
What followed was an unprecedented wave of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, inundating Border Patrol and other CBP officials for several years.
“No part of the U.S. border and immigration structure, from the Border Patrol to immigration courts to [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services], was able to cope with the ensuing flow of illegal aliens seeking asylum,” the report states. “As of late 2024, nearly 1.7 million asylum cases were pending in the Department of Justice’s immigration courts, of a total caseload exceeding 3.7 million.”
“In July 2024, the backlog of asylum cases pending with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services exceeded 1 million (of around 9 million total pending cases), more than a 10-fold increase in a decade,” the report continues.
Trump — a little more than two months into his second non-consecutive term — has dramatically reduced border encounters through his own executive orders and other unilateral reforms. Such directives have included declaring a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, successfully coercing the Mexican and Canadian governments to put more resources into border security and marshaling the resources of nearly every other federal law enforcement agency into helping immigration authorities, among other measures.
The unilateral directives have dramatically turned the situation at the border around, but Heritage offers recommendations that may provide more permanent solutions to future immigration challenges.
Heritage, however, offers recommendations that may provide a more permanent solution to the issues that incentivize illegal immigration and cause border chaos.
The think tank recommends implementing Safe Third Country Agreements with Latin American governments from Mexico all the way down to Colombia, allowing a large swath of choices for incoming migrants to seek refuge elsewhere. The U.S., it argues, should also establish caps on asylum and refugee applications, taking into account what is manageable for case workers.
Additionally, Heritage highlighted immigration enforcement systems in Australia as a model to emulate, and cautioned against immigration policies used by the European government.
Australia largely dismantled the market for maritime migrant smugglers by turning back boats carrying illegal migrants beginning in the early 2000s. The European Union, on the other hand, has failed to implement agreements that adequately addresses the number of illegal migrants arriving en masse to the continent, Heritage argues.
“Economic migration, as with family migration, remains a congressional duty to regulate,” the report states. “Once a new refugee and asylum regime that places American interests over globalism is enacted, the executive branch must enforce those laws without circumventing them to achieve political aims.”
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