Category: Immigration Reform legislation

How Europe overhauled asylum migration

The EU experienced an explosion in migrants in 2015 –1.2 million migrants, almost all seeking asylum and much of it irregular– border crossing without permission).  Already some countries had been dealing with cross-Mediterranean migration. And some migration had been tolerated – for instance Moroccans into Spain. The surge in the mid 2010s prompted a decade of re-organization of asylum policies under the cloud of right-wing attacks.

As of now, migration remains high. Irregular migration remains above 300,000 a year or more. Outstanding asylum applications exceed one million – not much different than 10 year ago. What has changed is a EU-wide system for asylum management designed over the past ten years,

The initial EU response took place in 2016, in an agreement with Turkey which the EU paid  3 billion euros for hosting refugees, in exchange for Turkey accepting returns of irregular migrants from Greece and curbing smuggling routes. The EU-Turkey agreement slashed arrivals from 885,000 in 2015 to about 42,000 by 2017.

In 2020, a commission proposed a comprehensive EU system. The proposed idea was to bring about inter-governmental coordination, guide relations with migrant-sourcing countries and regularize asylum processing. Even this proposal it took years to be formally accepted.

A “New Pact on Migration and Asylum” was drafted in 2023, formally approved in 2024, and today in a phased introduction through mid-2026.

The EU-wide system now being put in place does not expressly refute or change the bedrock global standards for asylum laid out in 1951. However it does some things quite differently such using the applicant’s country of origin to weigh asylum applications and to make formal agreements with countries to house applicants

The reforms introduced mandatory accelerated procedures for certain categories of claims—such as those from safe countries of origin or manifestly unfounded applications—aiming to resolve them within three months, or even 12 weeks in border settings. Asylum applicants can now access the labor market after a maximum of nine months if no decision has been reached, without the need for separate work visas.

Deportation policies: the EU adopted a list including Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Kosovo, India, Morocco, and Tunisia, where asylum claims from these nations face accelerated scrutiny and higher rejection rates.

Policies now encourage voluntary return by Syrians, with countries like Denmark offering financial incentives up to 27,000 euros. Some 782,000 Syrians have returned from abroad.

What about a comprehensive immigration bill, Senator Cotton?

It may well happen that Republican senators will try to win Trump over to the concept of an immigration reform bill, which would be the third historic act in 100 years (1924 and 1965).  Trump would have to give up his campaign to remove millions of unauthorized persons – who would per such a bill be normalized into some form of legal status – in exchange for sweeping overhaul of many parts of our elephantine mess of immigration law.

Senator Cotton is probably the most articulate Republican senator with regard to a possible major reform in immigration. Here is a column he wrote for the NY Times in 2016.

In 2017 Cotton introduced the RAISE Act. Here is a section by section analysis.

Reducing Overall Immigration: Cut legal immigration by half, from approximately 1 million to around 500,000 annually. This reduction is intended to alleviate what Cotton describes as the negative economic impact of high immigration levels on American workers’ wages and job opportunities.

Points-Based Immigration System: A points-based system for employment-based visas, where immigrants would be evaluated based on criteria such as education level, English proficiency, and work experience. This system is designed to prioritize highly skilled individuals who can contribute effectively to the U.S. economy. Canada and Australia use a points based system.  There is wide popular support for skilled immigration.  the system is designed for permanent immigration.

By implication, temporary work visas for seasonal agricultural workers (H-2A) are apparently imperiled.

Family Sponsorship Limitations: The legislation seeks to limit family-sponsored immigration strictly to spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. This would eliminate the ability of citizens to sponsor adult children and siblings. for many decades the large majority of immigrants has come through family unification. This was baked into the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Celler Act).

End the Diversity Visa Lottery: The RAISE Act proposes to abolish the Diversity Visa Lottery, which Cotton argues does not serve the economic interests of the United States.

Cap refugee admissions to 50,000. The Obama and Biden administrations targeted 100,000 to 125,000. The first Trump administration sought in effect to destroy this program.

End birthright citizenship. The Constitutional Citizenship Clarification Act of 2024 would deny citizenship to persons born in the United States of “alien parents” who are unlawfully present in the United States.  This ban will join two pre-existing ones: parents are in the U.S. for diplomatic purposes or engaged in hostile occupation.

 

Is Trump trying to promote racial differences?

The White House issued a presidential action which included a critique of how scholarship has been addressing the social construction of race.  It said:

“Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. …The Smithsonian American Art Museum today features “The Shape of Power:  Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” an exhibit representing that “[s]ocieties including the United States have used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.”  The exhibit further claims that “sculpture has been a powerful tool in promoting scientific racism” and promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct, stating “Race is a human invention.””

The idea that race is a “biological reality” has been used to imply that traits, behaviors, and capacities are innate and immutable — stable, inherited biological essences with differences in intelligence, morality, and cultural potential.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Western science and popular thought often divided humanity into a few broad “races:” Caucasoid (White). Negroid (Black), Mongoloid (Asian), and occasionally: Australoid (for Aboriginal Australians)

In the United States racial thought went further by subdividing the “White” or “Caucasian” category into strict hierarchical sub-races. Influenced by thinkers like Madison Grant, who wrote The Passing of the Great Race (1916). The “Nordicist” model ranked European ethnic groups by desirability and “fitness.” People from Northern and Western Europe were at the pinnacle.  Grant’s  thinking directly supported the racist Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed).

Look for the emergence of influence by Human Diversity Foundation, which promotes ideas suggesting inherent and important genetic differences among racial groups. Look for more references to countries such as Nigeria as shitholes.

Special identity documents at a time of mass deportation

New York’s Department of Motor Vehicles issues a “standard” drivers license which looks like a normal drivers license except being marked “not for federal purposes.”  A “standard license” is a term used nationally to describe a personal identification that does not meet the REAL ID criteria created by a 2005, post 9/11 law, to control access to transportation such as airlines.

New York’s DMV requires proof of identity and location of residence. Typically an unauthorized person gets a what is commonly referred to as a consular identification card from a consulate of their country, such as Mexico. A card typically includes proof of nationality and identity, a photo ID and address. This is sufficient for the DMV to issue a license.

The Federal suit

Federal law enforcement agencies routinely inspect state databases in their normal line of work. Attorney General Bondi filed a suit against New York.  (This is gotten more play than a suit the week before against Illinois.) She objects to the provisions in the “Green Light” Law that bars the DMV from revealing information about the standard license holder to ICE and other federal immigration enforcement agencies, except by court order. Further, the DMV must notify individuals when federal immigration authorities request their information.

Besides New York State other states with special drivers licenses also have created legal barriers to immigration law enforcement agencies. (Go here for a national review of this topic). These include Illinois, Virginia, New Jersey, Colorado, California and Washington.

The most recent news regarding standard drivers license is the enactment of the Work and Family Mobility Act in Massachusetts, which went into effect in 2023.  The state’s Registry of Motor Vehicles is prohibited from asking or recording any questions about a person’s immigration status, but there are no bars to information requests by federal immigration law agencies.  The law was passed in 2022 by an override to Governor Charlie Baker’s veto. Opponents secured a referendum vote for repeal in November 2023. The repeal was rejected by 54% of the vote. Baker’s main objection was that the RMV did not have the capacity to identify fraudulent documents submitted by applicants.

 

 

Why mass deportation?

Except as a phase in an overall redesign of our legal system of immigration I do not see as compelling rationale for mass deportation other than that suggested by Timothy Snyder:

“Deportations are a spectacle to turn Americans against one another, to make us afraid, and to get us to see pain and camps as normal. They also create busy-work for law enforcement, locating the “criminals” in workplaces across the country, as the crime of the century takes place at the very center of power.”

It is worth noting that Trump has not called for an overhaul of immigraton laws by Congress.

Trump’s first two weeks: immigration

I have written here a brief analysis of Trump’s actions on immigration in the two weeks since inauguration. I summarize the historical context of immigration in the United States and address his border policy, mass deportation, and destruction of the humanitarian programs.

“Mass influx” declaration on immigration law enforcement

The American Immigration Council writes that “In 1996, Congress passed a law giving the federal government the power to declare an emergency relating to a “mass influx” of migrants. When this emergency provision is enacted, the government can both disburse funding to states and localities dealing with the “influx” and delegate authority to local law enforcement agents in those areas to enforce some aspects of federal immigration law. In other words, local police officers around the country could be enabled under this law to carry out the functions of a federal immigration officer.

On January 23, 2025, the law was invoked for the first time. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine C. Huffman declared a “mass influx” affecting the entire United States for at least 60 days, authorizing the Department of Homeland Security to deputize local law enforcement to conduct immigration enforcement in all 50 states.”

Further:

The majority of arrests by ICE involve cooperation with local police forces. This makes building on this cooperation a potentially powerful tool for arresting persons on the basis of being unauthorized to be in the U.S.

A key distinction exists between the “Mass Influx” provision (103(a)(10)) and the better-known 287(g) program. The 287(g) program, which has been used for years, allows local law enforcement to cooperate in immigration enforcement but mandates formal training and does not offer significant financial compensation. In contrast, the 103(a)(10) provision provides federal funding to local agencies, making it a more attractive option for law enforcement agencies seeking additional resources.

It needs to be noted that pretty much any person who has been in the U.S. for at least two years cannot be subject to “expedited removal” but rather has access to immigration court review, and the immigration courts are backed up for years. DHS will undoubtedly try to get around this.

And the decision to invoke this law raises several concerns. The involvement of local police in immigration enforcement has historically resulted in increased racial profiling, particularly against Latino communities, including U.S. citizens. Additionally, using local law enforcement for immigration enforcement may divert resources away from public safety efforts, including investigations of violent crimes. Immigrant communities may also become less likely to report crimes due to fear of deportation, undermining overall public safety.

 

Baseline on arrests, detention and removals

Austin Kocher very helpfully provides insights into the Biden era pattern of ICE enforcement action by the United States, to serve as a baseline for the Trump administration.

Arrests: During FY 2024 there were on daily average of 310 ICE arrests and daily average of 409 ICE detainers served. A detainer is a request by ICE to state or local law enforcement to detain or otherwise keep ICE informed of a person who has been arrested in kept in custody.  (These figures show how much ICE depends on state and local law enforcement.)

Trump is implicitly promising that these numbers will skyrocket.

In detention: as of mid-January: 40,000.  Trump is promising that this number will skyrocket. Out of detention but monitored (mainly by technology) as of mid-January, 188,000. On its face, Trump’s executive orders and rhetoric would require all of these persons to be detained since they are per Trump criminals.

ACTION SO FAR; it is unrealistic to expect that arrest and detention numbers will have grown in the first week of the administration’s lifetime. Btu shall we expect perhaps 1,000 arrests a day by the end of February?

Kocher notes, “There simply are not enough immigrants in the country with criminal convictions to enable the Trump admin to massively grow detention and deportation alone. They will have to go after a growing number of immigrants with no criminal histories.”

Deportations: Kocher does not address deportations. In FY 2024, there were 270,000 deportations, or about 700 per day. During Trump 1, there were about 1.5 million deportations or about 1,000 a day.

Here is a mid 2024 analysis of deportation trends. This analysis raises an important point, which is that most removals are voluntary and not in the custody of law enforcement.  

 

Humanitarian parole under attack by Trump

On January 20, Trump terminated the humanitarian parole program for at least the so-called CHNV countries. I am unable now to determine if similar programs for Ukrainians and Afghans have also been cancelled. This will almost certainly lead to hundreds of thousands of program beneficiaries being forced to leave the United States when their one or two-year stay is over.

This revocation of the program was 100% predictable. It is given little national media exposure because the media is fixated on Trump’s largely theatrical actions relating to the Mexican border (such as sending in elite troups to serve not to repel an invading forces but as construction workers).

On January 23, according to Welcome US, the Department of Homeland Security issued a notice directing immigration officials to review cases of individuals who are currently in the United States on humanitarian parole to determine whether to terminate their parole status and begin the process of removing them from the United States back to their home country.

Humanitarian parole was transformed by the Biden administration from a largely small scale program to much larger one, affecting hundreds of thousands of persons. it also introduced the requirement for financial sponsorships – a semi-privatization of humanitarian entry, because you needed a sponsor within the U.S. to be admitted.

Here is my overview of the Biden humanitarian parole programs…..and a summary of the National Immigration Forum’s in depth briefing on the program (go here for the entire document):

Humanitarian parole is a discretionary tool under the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows certain individuals to enter and temporarily stay in the U.S. without a visa. It’s granted for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit, providing temporary lawful presence and protection from deportation. It’s temporary and doesn’t confer permanent status or a path to citizenship. It’s used in various scenarios, including medical treatment, family emergencies, and large-scale humanitarian crises. Parolees undergo vetting and background checks. It has been used in major operations like the evacuation from Vietnam in 1975 and Afghanistan in 2021. Parole does not lead to permanent status and limits access to some public benefits.

Federal troops at the border: what for?

The U.S. is deploying some of its most valuable fast response troops to serve as construction workers.

According to the Wall Street Journal, The Pentagon on Friday readied more than 5,000 troops from high-profile warfighting units to deploy to the southwestern U.S., moving to fulfill President Trump’s order to escalate the military role along the border.

Armed infantry and support troops from the 82nd Airborne Division and the 10th Mountain Division…could be at the border within days, one defense official said

The 82nd and 10th Mountain divisions are among the Pentagon’s most combat-ready forces, reflecting Trump’s directive that the Pentagon “prioritize the protection of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the United States along our national borders.”

This deployment fits into the Trump narrative about an invasion which rises to the level of a national emergency (go here and here for the White House’s announcements).

U.S. troops will construct additional temporary and permanent physical barriers for additional security to curtail illegal border crossings and illicit trafficking, Pentagon officials said. Perhaps the military will provide planes to deport more persons, but I have no insight into whether more flights are needed now.