Biden’s New Plan to Reform the Political Asylum System

On Wednesday, August 18, Biden’s DOJ (Department of Justice) and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which aims to improve the political asylum system to reduce bureaucratic hurdles that substantially hinder the process.

This rule, which will be officially published in the Federal Register on August 20, ultimately seeks to optimize and streamline political asylum case processing at the US’ borders.

The Biden administration explains that the asylum system “has long been ‘overwhelmed’ and in desperate need of repair (…) A system that takes years to reach a result is simply not a functional one”. Thus, it proposes to expedite asylum status adjudications with the help of USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) officers.

In other words, if this rule is officially implemented, certain political asylum applications that would usually go directly to an immigration court may be evaluated by USCIS officers, who are also trained to handle these types of cases.

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What are Biden’s goals with this plan?

The Biden administration is proposing this plan for multiple reasons. Let’s look at some of them:

Address the immigration backlog

There is currently an alarming backlog of unresolved immigration cases in courts across the US, a high percentage of which are asylum claims. Therefore, to reduce waiting times and delays in most existing immigration processes, the Biden administration is proposing to expedite political asylum case processing through the new rule.

Expedite asylum seeker processing at the borders

The US’ borders are currently quite crowded, primarily with asylum seekers from Central America. Therefore, to stem the massive flow of foreigners and provide international assistance in a fair and orderly manner, the Biden administration proposes to streamline asylum case processing to offer protection to admissible immigrants and deny applications that do not meet eligibility requirements without intervention by an immigration court.

Expedite relevant deportations

The previous administration used to argue that asylum applicants do not always meet the mandatory requirements, but that, due to long waiting times, they take advantage of the local immigration system to work and reside in the US for a considerable period of time, knowing that their application will be denied.

Therefore, to address this issue, the Biden administration proposes to process most immigration cases at the borders so that immigrants who do not qualify for legitimate political asylum status can be returned almost immediately. In this way, the country would enforce immigration law fairly.

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