By M.M. CHALMERS and CARLOS SAPIR
In a Presidential Proclamation on June 4, Joe Biden imposed a sweeping ban on asylum seekers entering the United States. In doing so, he is once again trampling over his promises to the immigrant community in order to pander to racist voters.
Biden’s new immigration policy effectively declares that the U.S. will turn away nearly all asylum seekers that arrive at its borders for the foreseeable future—in direct contradiction of its own laws and international obligations regarding asylum seekers. This is a massive blow against immigrants seeking to enter the U.S., eliminating a relatively safe route to U.S. residency and forcing them to make the impossible choice of either returning home and facing the dangers that originally forced them to flee, or braving a deadly, unauthorized border crossing. In approving this measure, despite all his rhetoric about safety and the supposed exceptions to the rule, Biden has gone beyond any of the policies implemented by Trump during his presidency.
While it is a brutal betrayal of the many immigrant communities who trusted Biden to protect them from the far right’s racism in the 2020 election, this hostility to immigration is nothing new for the Democratic Party—despite its many election-year promises. The current era of border militarization is the product of policies shepherded by Bill Clinton in the 1990s; a decade later, Obama would earn himself the label of “Deporter in Chief,” deporting more people than any prior administration. Biden’s administration is evidently keen on maintaining this reputation, with spokespeople bragging about how their deportations have outpaced those of the Trump administration.
The Democratic Party has shown time and time again that it considers immigrants to be bargaining chips in an effort to win support from conservatives. The last 30 years of immigration policy have effectively been a contest between the two capitalist parties, with both trying to be “tougher” on immigration than their counterpart.
It is also important to note that the undermining of economies in Latin America and elsewhere in the semi-colonial world by U.S. imperialism is one of the driving causes of immigration in the first place. Free trade deals that prioritize the interests of the capitalist class have wiped out the livelihoods of agricultural workers across Latin America and forced them to give up their now unprofitable lands to seek economic stability elsewhere. Similarly, those fleeing climate change disasters are driven in large part by the massive production of fossil fuel emissions in the United States. Politicians may try to frame asylum and amnesty policies as an act of charity, but the reality of immigration, especially from across the Americas, is that the U.S. is the instigator of this displacement.
The xenophobic panic over immigration and “border security” has always been a manufactured crisis (even before we consider the hypocrisy of barring “immigration” to land that was itself stolen from Indigenous peoples). Immigrants are an integral part of our working-class communities. While mainstream rhetoric focuses on claims of “security threats,” immigration policy has consistently been crafted to suit the workforce needs of U.S. capitalists, who can easily hyperexploit immigrants who have fewer workplace protections and can be threatened with deportation.
Although we oppose any restrictions on immigration for these reasons, it is still worthwhile to investigate the legal minutiae of Biden’s new immigration policy, as the ban is cruel, racist and entirely unnecessary even when solely evaluated by the standards of liberal capitalism.
What is asylum?
Biden’s new policy specifically targets asylum seekers. Asylum is granted to people fleeing persecution in other countries in order to prevent them from being deported and allow them some rights as legal residents of the United States. To qualify for asylum, a person must (a) be fleeing persecution (i.e. facing harm or threats of harm based on certain demographic characteristics, such as race, religion and political affiliation) and (b) be physically present in the U.S. while they are applying for asylum (which is distinct from refugees, who enter the country as part of a resettlement program). It is not illegal, under international or U.S. national law, to enter the U.S. seeking asylum, even if you do not enter through a legal port of entry.[1]
What is Biden’s new policy?
According to a fact sheet posted on the Department of Homeland Security’s website,[2] Biden’s proclamation makes “three key changes” to the processing of immigrants during “periods of high border encounters.” The first is a suspension of the asylum process, during which noncitizens crossing the southern border “unlawfully or without authorization” will be ineligible for asylum unless they have “exceptionally compelling circumstances” or are included in an excepted category. While the policy goes on to detail exceptions, the expected outcome of this policy is the refusal of asylum for the vast majority of asylum seekers that countries are legally obligated to shelter per international treaties. The goal of this is to drastically reduce the number of asylum claims that are being processed at the border. However, it is important to note that, as mentioned previously, it is not unlawful to cross the border in order to make an asylum claim; Biden’s proclamation is therefore in conflict with current asylum laws.
The second change the DHS lists is to the screening process. Noncitizens being processed for expedited removal “will only be referred for a credible fear screening with an Asylum Officer if they manifest or express a fear of return to their country or country of removal, a fear of persecution or torture, or an intention to apply for asylum.” In other words, noncitizens caught crossing the border will not automatically be screened for asylum; instead, they must express an intent to apply for asylum or a fear of persecution should they be deported. The default action will be to begin the removal process. The final key point listed on the DHS website is that the U.S. will “continue to adhere to its international obligations” by screening these aforementioned individuals.
The proclamation lists exceptions to the policy for certain groups and circumstances. Excepted categories include lawful permanent residents, unaccompanied children, victims of severe trafficking (as defined in 8 CFR 214.11[3]), and other noncitizens with a valid visa or lawful permission to enter the United States. The last category includes users of the CBP One app, launched in October 2020 to allow people trying to enter the U.S. at a port of entry to file for permission before crossing the border. Since its release, the app has experienced errors and shutdowns due to high traffic, and racial bias in its facial recognition feature, and the increased user volume for the app following the implementation of the new policy is causing more outages and problems. Meanwhile, immigrants who fail to establish that they meet the excepting circumstances to the state’s satisfaction will be barred from reentry for five years, on penalty of criminal prosecution.
Meaning for migrants crossing the southern border
The proclamation has already gone into force, with the first deportations under the new rule taking place on Wednesday, June 5. People fleeing dangerous circumstances and making dangerous journeys to come to the United States in the hope of protection are at a high risk of being sent back; the bar for entry is steep, with more hoops to jump through.
The Biden administration has tied the implementation of these new rules to the rate of border crossings, stipulating that asylum will remain suspended “until daily average arrests fall below 1500 for a week straight.” They have not been that low since July 2020.
Biden has claimed that one of the goals of the proclamation is to deter people from trying to enter the U.S. through dangerous means, such as smuggling. But the organized criminal networks that run smuggling rings will be the quickest to adapt to the new rules, and in general do not shy away from exposing migrants to greater danger. Instead, the new rules will push more and more migrants toward these dangerous options for lack of an alternative.
The new policy also criminalizes asylum seekers who are unable to provide adequate evidence to satisfy immigration officers, whose judgment is subjective. Thus, even asylum seekers who fully meet the provisions that legally require the U.S. to admit them, and who face genuine danger should they fail to do so, can be turned away due to the (consciously or unconsciously) racist decisions of a security officer. Customs and Border Patrol as a department is riddled with openly racist officers, and has collaborated with racist paramilitary groups “volunteering” to patrol the border. There is absolutely no reason to expect that asylum seekers submitting to this process will be given a fair review.
The attorney general, appointed by the president, sets the standards for the rest of the immigration system, and because immigration courts are part of the executive branch, there is no judicial review from the rest of the U.S. court system. How many people will be turned away simply because their interviewer did not find their fears “credible?” How many state officials will tip the scales against finding migrants’ stories “credible” due to a political desire to appear tough on immigration and pander to right-wing racists?
Furthermore, Biden said in his speech that his administration would crack down on and deport asylum seekers with criminal convictions. This is in an effort to make the proclamation appear to be in the interest of the safety of American citizens, but Biden did not clarify whether there would be a distinction made between violent and nonviolent offenders. If someone has a criminal record for shoplifting, or for failing to pay a fine or ticket, would they also be at risk of removal to a country where they are in danger? And even for violent offenders, do they deserve to be sent back into dangerous situations at all, never mind the circumstances surrounding their convictions? In particular, asylum seekers facing political persecution in their countries of origin may have extensive “criminal records” due to states’ repression of their political activity, and not due to any actual wrongdoing.
This policy will have a disproportionate impact on working-class immigrants. The asylum system is already biased against the struggles of working-class people; you cannot, for instance, claim asylum on economic grounds, or on the grounds of environmental catastrophes (which are more likely to harm working-class people). It only protects against persecution, and even that protection is tenuous. During Trump’s presidency, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that domestic abuse and gang violence would no longer qualify a person for asylum claims, regardless of the threat to one’s life.
Immigrants are also not guaranteed an attorney, and even children who do not speak English have been required to represent themselves in court. Biden claims he wants to process asylum claims faster–in a matter of months rather than years—but the roadblocks that make processing these claims harder and more time-consuming are in part deliberate; they are designed to prevent working-class, non-English-speaking immigrants from entering the country.
There is no “lesser evil”
Biden’s decision to both impose this draconian measure and to validate racists’ fear of immigrants is a heinous betrayal of the marginalized communities who felt obligated to trust the Democratic Party to protect them against Trump. Biden has now gone beyond any of Trump’s policies, in addition to maintaining Trump-era policies. The Democrats have once again shown that they are not a lesser evil: they are the same evil, serving the same capitalist class, pandering to the same racists, and sacrificing the same victims. While they may occasionally criticize Republicans’ rhetoric, all it takes is the slightest shift in the political winds for them to gleefully declare that they will do more to “protect the border” than the Republicans.
Even worse, because most immigrants’ rights and civil liberties organizations are structurally and financially tied to the Democratic Party, the popular fightback against these evil immigration policies will be disorganized, muted, and much less effective than it otherwise could be. When Trump tried to institute a travel ban against Muslims, and when he instituted family-separation policies at the border, thousands of people took to the streets, borders, and airports in protest. These protests forced immediate changes to the policies, and could have continued to rally and organize people in defense of immigrants, to build a powerful and independent political movement that could challenge the government. Instead, after the initial, energetic actions and as the 2020 election season approached, Democratic Party-aligned groups channeled the public’s righteous anger against Trump’s policies into voting for Joe Biden.
Biden has tried to soften the blow of his new policy by expanding opportunities for non-citizen spouses of U.S. citizens to obtain citizenship without leaving the country. This has even been stated explicitly by Democratic Party representatives as “a way for the administration to balance out recent border enforcement measures”. But a “balance” between immigrants’ lives and wellbeing on one hand and reactionary fantasies of a “border invasion” on the other are a moral farce. We cannot trust a political party that haggles over our basic humanity and that openly admits it would sell us down the river if they thought it would win them more votes.
To protect our immigrant communities—as well as the thousands of persecuted, desperate workers who have yet to enter the U.S. in order to escape environmental and economic collapse at home—we need an immigrant rights movement that is independent of the capitalist parties. We need a movement that understands that its power comes not from trusting and voting for politicians who have already broken every promise made to our community the moment it is politically expedient (and sometimes even before then), but rather from the power we can wield as workers, as collectively irreplaceable gears in the machinery of the economy, and by showing up on the streets, at the borders, ports, and airports to challenge each and every time that the government tries to “protect” people by putting immigrants in danger.
Beyond fighting for their own rights, immigrant workers are also some of the most important organizers for the broader class struggle, leading vital unionization efforts and showing up for other anti-oppression movements as well. Immigrants form a huge part of vital, hyper-exploited economic sectors—including logistics, manufacturing, agriculture, health care, domestic work, and many other job categories—and thus form a vital part of the working-class movement in this country.
Many immigrants also bring with them deep traditions of struggle learned in the mass movements and workers’ and peasants’ organizations in their countries of origin. Immigrant leadership already plays a huge role in working-class organizing, and will form the backbone of any movement or party fighting for an alternative to capitalist domination, as well as providing a vital bridge to sympathetic movements internationally. The working class is international, and only by embracing this internationalism and full equal rights for all workers will we be able to bring down the borders that have crossed us.
Open borders now! Papeles para todos! Full civil and political rights for all! No votes for capitalists and the racist state they administer!
NOTES
[1] https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/five-things-to-know-about-the-right-to-seek-asylum
[2] https://www.dhs.gov/news/2024/06/04/fact-sheet-presidential-proclamation-suspend-and-limit-entry-and-joint-dhs-doj
