The Wall Street Journal offers an excellent, detailed report showcasing how many people who cross the U.S. border — and other countries’ borders as well — claim to be seeking asylum, when in fact they are really seeking economic opportunities.
Run by an aid group, it’s a destination for migrants planning to turn themselves in to U.S. border agents and request asylum.
That simple request is the main driver of record illegal immigration in much of the Western world. People travel thousands of miles, on foot and across seas, to turn up at the land borders of rich countries to ask for asylum, a form of legal protection for people who face persecution in their home country.
It’s also become a key loophole for economic migrants, who aren’t under threat but want better working opportunities. Quirks in the law and an overwhelmed processing system nearly guarantee entry, at least for a time.
The U.S. received more than 920,000 applications for asylum during its 2023 fiscal year, compared with just 76,000 in 2013. Since a single application can cover multiple members of a family, the figures underestimate the actual numbers of people seeking asylum.
Family groups, who now almost always ask for asylum, make up about half the roughly two million people encountered by authorities who illegally crossed the U.S. frontier with Mexico last year. Another half million came through legal ports of entry, many using a Border Patrol smartphone app that launched in January 2023 to make an appointment to cross and ask for asylum.
The Journal reports that the typical asylum case now takes four years to resolve. One court has an average wait of nearly six years. In New York, migrants are being told to come back for a court appearance in 2033.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with seeking to immigrate to the U.S. for economic opportunities. Lots of immigrants have done it, in the past and today. The allegedly xenophobic and closed-minded U.S. has welcomed about a million new green-card holders each year since the millennium (with a drop to about 700,000 during the pandemic). If you follow the rules, fill out the paperwork, wait your turn, and pass the background check, welcome; I hope all your dreams come true here in the United States.
Giving asylum to those who are in genuine mortal danger from their governments is a good and righteous thing to do — but that system was ruined by those who encouraged citizens of other countries to come to the U.S. and make spurious claims seeking asylum. As the WSJ describes it:
In the U.S., so many people illegally entering now request asylum that the Border Patrol rarely bothers asking migrants if that’s why they have arrived. They simply direct them to wait in places set up by migrant aid groups, such as Campo de Asilo, until they can be driven to Border Patrol stations to be fingerprinted, given information for their first court appearance and returned to aid groups or dropped off at bus stops.
What we have now is de facto open borders. People come across the border and make a claim for asylum that is weak or implausible but don’t have their cases adjudicated for about a half decade, or even longer. This gives them years to live in the country, even if they are doing so in a state of legal limbo.