MIGRATIONBiden’s Immigration Order Won’t Fix Problems Quickly – 4 Things to Know About What’s Changing
Biden’s executive order prevents everyone who crosses the U.S.-Mexico border without a visa, and not passing through an official port of entry, from seeking asylum. It goes into effect when the number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border each day exceeds an average of 2,500. Effectively, this is a ban on asylum.
Immigration is a top issue in the upcoming presidential election – and President Joe Biden’s new executive order restricting migrants’ ability to apply for asylum is likely to further elevate the subject in national politics.
The number of undocumented migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has soared in recent years, with 249,785 arrests taking place along the border in December 2023. That marks a 13% rise from the 222,018 migrants arrested by the Border Patrol along the U.S.-Mexico border in December 2022.
Jean Lantz Reisz, an immigration law scholar at the University of Southern California, explains four key things to know about how this executive order will take effect and influence immigration trends.
1. The executive order is basically an asylum ban
Biden announced his executive order on June 4, 2024. It prevents everyone who crosses the U.S.-Mexico border without a visa, and not passing through an official port of entry, from seeking asylum. It goes into effect when the number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border each day exceeds an average of 2,500.
There have generally been more than 2,500 people without visas crossing the U.S.-Mexico border for each day of Biden’s entire presidency.
Effectively, this is a ban on asylum, meaning the legal right for undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. because of the harm they face in their home countries.
Under Biden’s order, some undocumented migrants who express a fear of returning to their home countries may be eligible for other kinds of legal protections – for example, legal protections intended for torture survivors.
In order to get this special legal protection, migrants would have to show U.S. border and immigration officials a lot of evidence outlining the danger they would face in their home countries. They would need to show more evidence than is required for asylum-seekers. Migrants will generally not have this evidence on hand and, as a result, will not receive any kind of legal protection or chance to stay in the U.S.
Over the past decade, including during Biden’s presidency, approximately two-thirds of people who applied for asylum while they were in deportation proceedings were granted asylum or another kind of legal protection that allowed them to stay in the U.S., according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data organization at Syracuse University.
