The “Big Big Beaut bill law” now before the Senate takes the current concern for making each government relationship transactional to an immoral end. It puts a price of $ 1,000 to the right to seek asylum, the first time that the United States would require someone to pay for this human right.
The Universal Human Rights Declaration argues that “everyone has the right to search and enjoy in other asylum countries for persecution.” American law incorporates that right, stating that “any alien … regardless of the state of such alien, can request asylum.” Neither of them makes this contingent right to pay.
Keep in mind that asylum seekers in the United States do not have the right to lawyers appointed by the Court. That means that the system already disadvantages indigent asylum seekers: they cannot afford a lawyer, they often do not speak English and do not have a road map to navigate the arcane immigration law.
The new law would make asylum even more inaccessible for a poor person, in effect, creating two kinds of those looking for refuge. Those rich enough to pay $ 1,000 in advance would have their protection claims heard; Those who could not pay would be deviant to face the persecution and the problems that expelled them from their countries of origin to begin with.
If this part of the bill is not modified before its final passage, the Congress will have accumulated about the obstacles that the Trump administration has already established to block the right to seek asylum. On the day of the inauguration, President Trump proclaimed an invasion of the United States for “millions of aliens” and “suspend[ed] The physical entry of any alien involved in the invasion through the southern border. “Until the president decides that the” invasion “has ended, the order explicitly denies the right of any person to seek asylum if it allowed their continuous presence in the United States.
Since January 20, asylum seekers try to enter the United States on the southwest border have been rejected and, in some cases, loaded in military planes and taken to third countries, Panama, for example, without any opportunity to make asylum claims.
“I requested asylum repeatedly. I really tried,” said Artemis Ghamzadeh, a 27 -year -old Christian convert from Iran, to Human Rights Watch after being sent to Panama. “No one listened to me … Then an immigration officer told me that President Trump had finished asylum, so they were going to deport us.”
In addition to the basic rate for asylum seekers, the “Law of Bill Big Beutify” would also require that an asylum applicant pay a rate of “no less than $ 550” every six months to be allowed to work in the United States while their claim is pending. The bill would also impose an additional rate of $ 100 for each year, an asylum application remains pending in the very late system, punishing the person fleeing the persecution for the government's failure to provide sufficient immigration judges.
Children are not saved. For the privilege of sponsoring an unaccompanied migrant child, the bill would require the sponsor, often a relative who advances to take care of the child, to pay a rate of $ 3,500. The priorities of the Congress for spending in unaccompanied children arriving at our borders show a clear lack of compassion: the bill directs that an allocation of $ 20 million for the customs of the US. UU. And border protection “will only be used to carry out an examination of said alien child not accompanied for tattoos related to gangs and other gang marks.”
Add to these barriers the complete closure of the refugee resettlement program of the United States, with the exception of white South Africans; the termination of “humanitarian probation” for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans; The end of temporary protected state programs that have provided protection to people who come from countries of generalized conflict, and the prohibition of trips that prohibits the entry of some of the main refugee producing countries in the world, including Afghanistan, Myanmar, Iran and Sudan.
Meanwhile, Trump promotes the idea of selling $ 5 million of “gold cards” for super rich foreigners who want to buy a permanent American residence. When asked who could be interested, Trump replied: “I know some Russian oligarchs who are very pleasant people.”
The “Big Beutiful Bill Bill” includes $ 45 billion for the capacity to stop immigration and customs compliance (according to my calculations, that would be more of triple capacity). It also specifies $ 14.4 billion for ICE transport and elimination operations, $ 46.5 billion for the border wall and $ 858 million to pay bonds to ICE officials.
With all the money that Congress is prepared to spend, it is surprising that the bill has not added a few dollars to linked the registration at the base of the statue of freedom and return it to say: “Give me your rich and well relaxed … long for breathing free.”
Bill Freick is director of Refugee Rights at Human Rights Look and the author of the report “'Nobody cares, nobody heard': the US Expulsion of nationals from the third country to Panama.
