Editor: How does one ask for asylum from poverty?
“On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced a sweeping new immigration policy that bars entry to almost all immigrants at the southern border and denies them the right to apply for asylum.
The new policy is to take effect on May 11, the day of the expiration of Title 42. This previously obscure public health provision of US law was first employed by Trump to ban immigration at the US-Mexico border under the false pretense that immigrants spread COVID-19. This cruel and hypocritical policy of blanket exclusion was then continued by Biden, even as he proclaimed the pandemic had ended.
Biden’s new policy is aimed at filling the gap left by Title 42’s expiration. It means all immigrants who attempt to cross the southern border on foot will be deported without a court hearing or any right to apply for asylum.
The administration’s pseudo-legal justification is that all immigrants who pass through Mexico forfeit their right to asylum in the United States when they fail to do so in Mexico. But the reality is Mexico is wracked by the same violence and poverty that dominate all countries from which refugees flee.” — WSWS