Let’s clear up some misconceptions about the 1,500 or so Central Americans who have now arrived at our southern border.
They are not asylum seekers — they are publicity seekers. People who are truly escaping political persecution at the hands of their government — the legal standard for being recognized as a refugee or asylee — request protection in the first neutral country they enter. They do not traverse a rather large country like Mexico, trailed by television cameras, to reach the U.S. border. And if they did not trust the Mexican government to treat their asylum claims fairly, they would have sought protection from international entities, like the U.N. high commissioner for refugees.
They are not spontaneously fleeing their homelands in Central America because circumstances in those countries have taken a sudden turn for the worse. Those nations have been dysfunctional, corrupt, impoverished, and crime-ridden for as long as anyone can remember. The “caravaners†are part of an orchestrated effort on the part of a group calling itself Pueblos Sin Fronteras, “People without Borders,†to challenge the sovereignty of the United States.
As the group’s name suggests, Pueblos Sin Fronteras believes that anybody has the right to enter any nation (most especially the United States) whenever they want to and that we have a legal and moral obligation to let them in so long as they don’t show up in tanks.
The clear objectives of Pueblos Sin Fronteras are to exploit the humanitarian policies of the United States and to take advantage of our asylum system that was carefully crafted to protect the oppressed, not reward opportunists.
The United States is under no legal or moral obligation to allow politically motivated organizations to use our humanitarianism and our legal system as a weapon in their assault on our national sovereignty. The real intent of the organizers is to get caravan members into the United States because they know that, once in the country, it will be extremely difficult for the government to ever remove them. To achieve this end, Pueblos Sin Fronteras along with “legal aid†groups are openly coaching the migrants about what they need to say to immigration officials in order to make a facially valid asylum claim.
The Trump administration is responding exactly as it should to protect the security of our nation and the integrity of our laws. Those who credibly claim that they fear persecution by their governments will be permitted to seek political asylum. Those whose claims lack merit can legally be turned back under the Expedited Removal provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/386503-central-american-migrants-arent-seeking-asylum-theyre-activists
