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Washington D.C. (March 3, 2023) – A proposed new asylum regulation advertised as deterring illegal immigration at the southern border is unlikely to have the intended result.

Under the new rule, some aliens who have not applied for protection in a country they passed through en route to the United States may be ineligible for asylum under some circumstances. Immigration activists have decried the rule as a return to Trump-era deterrence policies but, in reality, it is nothing of the kind.

On this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Elizabeth Jacobs, director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, explains how the rule is not what the administration claims or the activists fear. “There are a wide range of exceptions included in this rule that are easy to exploit and will likely swallow the rule whole,” Jacobs says.

One of the major exceptions to the rule applies to families that are determined to be eligible for withholding of removal (which, like asylum, provides protection for aliens who make certain persecution or torture claims). The Biden administration’s rule allows them to circumvent the presumption against eligibility for asylum, and as a result, creates yet another incentive for migrants to bring children with them on the dangerous journey to the southern border.

In his closing commentary, Mark Krikorian, host of Parsing Immigration Policy and executive director of the Center, draws attention to a New York Times article about child labor abuse. Most, if not all, of those abused in the workplace are migrant children. This exploitation is a direct result of the Biden administration prioritizing moving minors out of shelters and to their sponsors as quickly as possible without effectively vetting sponsors.