Opinion: Democrats will have to develop their own big answer to the asylum crisis
DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. By Greg Sargent Greg Sargent Opinion writer covering national politics Email Bio Follow Opinion writer April 3 at 4:39 PM As your humble blogger reported earlier, Democrats are engaged in an internal debate over how to develop their own proactive solutions to the humanitarian crisis that is being caused by the large spike in asylum-seeking families arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.
This suggests a possible way forward. Frank Sharry, the executive director of America’s Voice, tells me that some in the immigration advocacy community are increasingly convinced that Democrats need an ambitious agenda of their own in response to the current situation, which really is becoming unsustainable.
This would build on an approach that House Democrats offered in 2016 with the Secure the Northern Triangle Act. Rep. Zoe Lofgren , who championed that bill, recently said she will soon be introducing new legislation along these lines, so this is an indication of what it might look like. That multilayered solution, Mittelstadt continues, also"must include steps to strengthen asylum adjudication and processing at the U.S. border, shore up the overloaded immigration court system and strengthen capacity at official ports of entry, among many other necessary steps.”
The emerging agenda among advocates and Democrats would not include any of those additional restrictive features. Thus, this agenda would not foreclose the option of applying here, and would not gut the basic values at the core of our asylum program — values in keeping with international human rights norms, which hold that when people present themselves at the border and appeal for refuge, they have the right to have their claims heard.
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