Immigration and the border are on the ballot in multiple ways in Arizona — from the heated rhetoric around immigration coming from the presidential campaigns, to Proposition 314, which would make it a state crime to enter Arizona outside a port of entry.
But all of the talk about a crisis on the border has been blunted by an executive order from President Joe Biden that has severely limited asylum. We’ve seen the numbers of migrant crossings at the border drop dramatically since.
Immigrant advocates decried the order, calling it a violation of the fundamental right to seek asylum here. Others say that right was being abused, that most of the migrants arriving here asking for it won’t even qualify.
Evelyn Cruz, director of the Immigration Clinic at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, says in today’s world, the problem isn’t going anywhere.
Cruz said asylum is an idea that goes back as far as the Greeks. But its modern day history began after World War II in the United States, after Congress had enacted an immigration law that severely restricted the number of immigrants allowed into the country for the first time.
After the war, countries agreed there should be a system through which people who needed protection could get it. That system became the asylum system. But, even with it, Cruz told me, in the United States, asylum is much more limited than it is in much of the rest of the world. Cruz joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
EVELYN CRUZ: In the United States, we basically have to fit into one of five categories, persecution based on religion, race, ethnicity, a particular social group or a political reason. And that is very limited. Other countries have agreed to regional asylum rules that include general is or include an ability to provide for the basic necessities of individuals. So qualifying for asylum in the United States is very, very difficult.
GILGER: So this obviously has changed today. This conversation, like understanding asylum today feels a little different than it has in the past because we've seen the numbers of asylum seekers just skyrocket on the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years. When we've seen the response to that politically, the Biden administration severely restricting asylum just in recent months. And then you know, seeing an immediate drop in the number of people trying to do it.
I wonder like, this debate, this current situation and the current global migration situation. How do you think that's changed the conversation?
CRUZ: Well, to some extent, mobility has been one of the main reasons why we are changing the number of people who are seeking to be protected. Spain sees a good number of people from Latin America seeking asylum.
GILGER: People from all over the world are going to places all over the world.
CRUZ: Exactly. And so movement of people due to displacement for anything from natural disasters, global war wars. It's something that has been going on since the Greeks. But the ability of people to move, to connect with people and resources in other countries that they would normally not have gravitated toward, has increased.
GILGER: So this is why we're seeing more of it right now, correct.
CRUZ: We have a lot of different reasons why people are being forced away from their homes.
GILGER: So looking at the U.S.-Mexico border and the numbers of people arriving here, the language of invasion. I wonder what you think that does to the idea, the assumption that we had in this country for a long time that asylum was a right.
CRUZ: Well, it's not asylum per se that is a right. But the idea that you should have an opportunity to be heard and present your claim under which you could qualify for those protections. But the thing that has been whittling away from it is the ability of individuals to gain an opportunity to present their claims for one reason or another.
The first has been limitations on appeals. And then you also have the conditions of expedited processes in which individuals are not able to first acclimate themselves. A lot of them may have endured traumas in their homeland or on their travels to the United States.
And a high percentage of women seek out birth control before getting on the road to the United States or to any other country because they know that there is a likelihood that they're going to be raped. And so if you are arriving and you have had this trauma and you don't have the language, the culture, the understanding of what process is currently being undertaken because they keep changing. You are not likely to be prepared to express the reasons why you should be considered for this protection.
GILGER: OK. So it's gotten harder in those ways. And then it got way harder, right, rently, when the Biden administration sort of changed the rules and has basically capped this when there are certain thresholds met of people arriving at the border.
CRUZ: So it demonstrates that one of the biggest challenges that we have always had with asylum is that there's only two ways that you can present yourself to request asylum. You are in a United Nations refugee camp. The only other way that you could apply for asylum is that you need to present yourself at the U.S. border, either at the border entry point or at the airport.
And so those very limited pathways meant that individuals who want to be protected have a genuine fear, are not presenting themselves at the border have been demonized for doing exactly what they are supposed to do in order to get that protection.
GILGER: That's really interesting. So critics will say that this right that people assume they have to seek asylum here, to at least try to get asylum here, is being abused. Essentially that this massive number of people arriving at the border and asking for asylum, most of them in the end will not pass that high threshold and actually receive asylum. What's your response to those criticisms?
CRUZ: So there's a catch-22 when it comes to asylum, you have to demonstrate that you are in danger that it's a likelihood that you're going to be harmed in your home country. The longer it takes for individuals to be processed through the system, the more likely that that hopefully has dissipated. And in some ways they have received the benefit they sought, they were protected during the time that they were in danger.
Now, you have someone who's being denied, and you say, see this person didn't have an asylum claim to begin with. But the other thing is that we, meaning countries, have a responsibility to understand what those conditions are in those countries and to invest in not making them worse and finding ways to improve situations.
I've done research work in El Salvador, Mexico and in Pakistan, working with universities in those countries to establish better legal systems that provide an avenue for marginalized communities to access the legal system and feel some trust in their system. And so those are the kind of things that are going to reduce the, the amount of individuals who may decide to come to the United States for reasons that are genuinely connected to an inability to make a life.
Most often than not immigrants would rather stay home if the conditions in their home country were amicable to having a normal life, being able to invest in yourself and not believe that some military person is gonna go,” well, give me your cows because I need to feed my troops,” and you have no way of asking the authorities to enforce your right over your cows. Those are the kind of things that diminish their ability to say things can get better. And that's often what leads them to take a very dangerous path coming to the United States, right?
GILGER: So you're talking about the causes that send people, right? What about the other side of that? What do you think the answer is on the U.S. side when we're not going to see numbers of people migrating around the world go down, it seems like countries all over the world are sort of grappling with that issue, right? Like how do we handle the unprecedented numbers of people who have this kind of mobility now and also often have reason to flee. I mean, what is the answer?
CRUZ: Investment in long-term solutions that provide a better option than to migrate.
GILGER: You've got to start at this root
CRUZ: You have to start at this root. And to some extent, the United States oftentimes does not balance well the idea of how you manage the flow of individuals in a way that provides a protection for those who absolutely need the protection and provides a way for those who don't to understand why they don't qualify.
Because often times people who do not understand why they were denied a relief, believe that is due because there's some nefarious reason to it. And will try to find someone else who might grant them that status. A lot of the numbers from the Border Patrol are multiple entry people. It's not just 50,000 people enter today. It's 5,000 that enter three times. This was the third time that we were entering.
And so, so there are a number of other things that we can do if we start from understanding that human beings are going to do what's best for the family and are going to do what they feel has honored their humanity.
