March 3, 2023 Dear John, In a commentary out today, MPI Senior Fellow Doris Meissner examines whether the asylum proposed rule issued recently by the Biden administration represents a workable rescue for a U.S.-Mexico border confronting record and rapidly evolving migration. Success will turn on how the proposed rule is implemented and other factors, not least the cooperation of Mexico and other countries as well as willingness by Congress to provide the funds to hire large numbers of asylum officers and immigration judges. “The administration is making a big bet—that by redirecting asylum seekers to official border crossings and providing alternative legal entry humanitarian programs to the most rapidly increasing flows, a reset will take hold that allows for timely, fair asylum processing and manageable post-Title 42 enforcement,” Meissner writes. The new policies involve some untested strategies that represent shocks to the system. “But facing rapidly changing realities at the border and waning public confidence in the viability of the asylum system under these circumstances, the administration is responding with what it sees as one of the few new options it can tap,” she notes. “Because May 11 is looming, the date the government’s pandemic emergency declaration is scheduled to be lifted—and with it the related Title 42 border expulsions policy that has resulted in migrants being expelled from the southwest border more than 2.6 million times since 2020—the pressures at the border are further escalating operationally and politically.” The proposed rule, she writes, “is a bid to save the U.S. asylum system, not shut it down, as some contend.” Meissner, who directs MPI’s U.S. Immigration Policy program, oversaw reform of the U.S. asylum system during her time as commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in the 1990s and has advanced more recent policy proposals to improve the processing of border asylum cases. You can read the full commentary here: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/revamping-asylum-us-mexico-border. Sincerely,  Michelle Mittelstadt
Director of Communications and Public Affairs
Migration Policy Institute | 
