IMMIGRATIONSeeking Protection: How the U.S. Asylum Process Works
Record numbers of migrants seeking to cross the southern U.S. border are challenging the Joe Biden administration’s attempts to restore asylum protections. Here’s how the asylum process works.
Summary
· The right to apply for asylum is enshrined in U.S. and international law. The qualifications resemble those for refugee status, but asylum seekers follow a different process.
· Asylum claims have reached record levels in recent years, though they dropped early in the COVID-19 pandemic. In fiscal year 2022, the U.S. government granted asylum to more than thirty-six thousand migrants.
· President Joe Biden pledged to restore asylum access that had been curtailed under President Donald Trump, but a historic surge in migration at the U.S.-Mexico border is challenging his plans.
The right to apply for asylum, a type of protection granted to migrants fleeing persecution or other harm in their home countries, has been a central component of U.S. immigration law for decades. But rising numbers of asylum seekers and a growing backlog in the system have increasingly challenged policymakers. President Donald Trump responded with a slew of policies to deter would-be migrants from making the often arduous journey to the southern U.S. border. President Joe Biden has reversed many Trump-era decisions, but a record number of illegal border crossings in fiscal year 2023 (FY 2023) have sparked political tensions between federal authorities and border state governors and reignited a fiery debate in Congress over immigration reform.
What is asylum?
Asylum is a form of legal protection that host countries grant to migrants who have been forcibly displaced and are fleeing harm or persecution, or the fear of persecution, in their place of origin. According to U.S. and international law, a claim of persecution must be made based on one of five “protected grounds”: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. (The breadth of this last category has stoked many legal debates.) The right to asylum is laid out in U.S. immigration law and Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; it is also outlined in the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. While asylum offers the same protection as refugee status, migrants seeking asylum in the United States must apply for it from within the country or at one of its 328 official ports of entry rather than from abroad.
