To ensure email delivery directly to your inbox, please add
@migrationpolicy.org to your address book.

The Migration Policy Institute

February 25, 2021

Dear John xxxxxx,

The Biden administration has taken swift steps to reverse several high-profile Trump-era restrictions on asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. However, rebuilding the asylum system will take sustained and strategic action, including by addressing longstanding weaknesses in the asylum adjudication system, Migration Policy Institute (MPI) Senior Fellow Doris Meissner and Policy Analyst Sarah Pierce argue in a new commentary.

Recent actions including the decision to end the Migration Protection Protocols that have required asylum applicants to await decisions in northern Mexico mark important first steps to restore efficient and fair asylum procedures at the border.

The Biden administration faces other decisions, including:

•    Revisiting the grounds for asylum eligibility and the narrowed interpretations of protection established by Trump attorneys general.
•    Authorizing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services asylum officers to decide the full merits of border asylum cases, which would help reduce record backlogs in the immigration court system, make border management more effective, and result in more timely, fair adjudications.
•    Initiatives to scale up legal representation for asylum seekers in their proceedings.

“The challenge now is to fix the plane while flying it,” the authors write. “That calls for creating a new reality of deciding asylum cases fairly but promptly and forestalling a humanitarian emergency at the border that could eclipse the administration’s plans for buttressing border control through both a more effective, humane asylum system and strong, proactive efforts to reduce the drivers of migration through regional migration management measures with neighboring countries.”

Read the commentary here: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/biden-administration-asylum-road-ahead.

Best regards,

Michelle Mittelstadt
Director of Communications and Public Affairs
Migration Policy Institute




Migration Policy Institute
Stay up to date on MPI's events and newest publications.

Migration Data Hub
Find the latest immigration statistics, maps, and numbers for the United States and other countries.

Migration Information Source
Read a unique, online journal that provides fresh thought and global analysis of international migration and refugee trends.

Click here to unsubscribe