Illegal Immigration

[Yonadav]

If you can find the article I'd definitely be interested in reading it, but everything I've seen from this administration doesn't show that they are trying to actually hamper the amount of actual asylum seekers into the country.  If you are truly seeking asylum, you can do so at points of entry or embassies.  Most of the people trying to illegally cross are not doing so to actually seek asylum, they are economic immigrants.  And there's nothing wrong with that, but there is a line that they need to get in to enter the country.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morn...itics-say/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nat...story.html

In his opinion, Sessions wrote, “Generally, claims by aliens pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence perpetrated by non-governmental actors will not qualify for asylum” and that an asylum applicant must generally demonstrate persecution because of affiliation with a “particular social group.”

Sessions told immigration judges, whose courts are part of the Justice Department, his decision “restores sound principles of asylum and long-standing principles of immigration law.” He also said it would help reduce the growing backlog of 700,000 court cases, more than triple the number in 2009.

Two days later, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued guidance to asylum officers on how to apply Sessions decision as they assessed the claims of those seeking safety in the United States. Together, the new policies generally made it harder to seek asylum, particularly in the early stage of the process where applicants must demonstrate they have “credible fear” to stay.

Sullivan took aim at much of the new guidance. He wrote there was “no legal basis for an effective categorical ban on domestic violence and gang-related claims,” and he specifically invalidated the general rule that asylum officers should dismiss such claims in assessing applicants’ credible fear claims.

Sullivan also blocked the requirement that applicants alleging harm by someone other than a government must “show the government condoned the private actions or at least demonstrated a complete helplessness to protect the victim.”

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You likely didn't bring a grappling hook and safety harness with you because a) most of these people are coming from poor countries with barely enough money to eat let alone buy recreational climbing equipment and b) climbing equipment is heavy so you decided not to trek through the desert with it. 

These people pay coyotes thousands of dollars to help them illegally migrate and you think the lack of a rope and grappling hook is going to be a major obstacle?  Hooboy.  Mmmmmkay.

Thanks, Jor.  That's the general gist of it.  The article that I was looking for says that under the rules that Sessions was pushing for, the persecution that was the source of the credible fear had to be specifically persecution from the state. It's driving me nuts that I can't find that article because it was pretty much the most detailed article on the subject that I have read. To me, it seemed that Sessions was defining the grounds under which a person would qualify for asylum to pretty much exclude all refugees from south of our border, while leaving the door open for people who are basically just political refugees who are fleeing big bad communism.