With the expiration of Title 42 on May 11, 2023, we thought it apt to share the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver April 30, 2023 episode “Biden and the Border” which examines President Biden’s failure to deliver on a key campaign promise to asylum seekers allowing them back on US soil to file for asylum. The British-American comedian, political commentator, and television host, appropriately notes “we’re just entering a different phase of an immigration dystopia, particularly for asylum seekers.” Mr. Oliver shines a light on the administration’s “bad policy and s*itty apps”, namely the “CBP One” app.
Read moreVenezuelan Exodus: In Search of Livelihoods
Imagine yourself a citizen of a country that has been under an authoritarian regime for the past twenty-three years. You and your family are in a state of food insecurity, violence, and medicinal shortages driven by decades of political turmoil. Would you leave everything behind, risk your life, and perhaps your loved ones’ lives, in search of a better life you may have only seen on television or films? Millions of Venezuelans have had to make this arduous decision and consequently fled their homes due to political persecution, loss of livelihoods, lack of food, medicine, and other basic necessities. Since 2015 more than 7.1 million people have fled Venezuela. The dictatorial government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and his predecessor Hugo Chavez, have turned a country once considered the richest in Latin American, due to its housing the largest oil reserves in the world, into a “narco state” where citizens are forced to live with soaring expenses, limited job opportunities, and minimal political freedoms. Maduro’s government is not recognized by the US government and therefore migrants at the US border cannot be deported back to Venezuela. The idea of reaching the land of the free has prompted thousands of Venezuelans to risk their lives by making a 6,000 mile journey into the unknown. In fiscal year 2022, an unprecedented 188,000 Venezuelans have presented themselves at the US southern border.
Read moreWalk a Mile in Their Shoes
The Dead Have a Name
We Ought to Open Channels of Migration
A Moral Travesty
Asylum: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
With only a few days left until the conclusion of the 2020 election, John Oliver discusses how the Trump administration has handled asylum seekers over the past four years, noting how the administration has been in this area “truly disciplined about being truly evil.” Oliver discuss how asylum is supposed to work and how the Trump administration has subverted it. He focuses in particular on the so-called “Migrant Protection Protocols” that the administration instituted that have led to asylum seekers living in makeshift camps in dangerous conditions where migrants face kidnappings and violence and how the administration has “all but shut off the pathway for many asylum seekers to enter the country.” Oliver says: “[T]he asylum process has never been easy, but this administration has made it absolute hell.”
U.S. Department of Homeland Security: DHS and DOJ Issue Third-Country Asylum Rule
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced stricter eligibility qualifications for asylum seekers on July 15, 2019, according to a statement released by the DHS. The joint Interim Final Rule (IFR), published in the Federal Register as of July 16, 2019, denies asylum to any applicants who passed through a third country in transit to the United States but did not formally seek asylum in that country, with only a few exceptions.
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