TIL: The "Migrant Crisis" is Self-Inflicted

Source: Carlos Barria / Reuters.

I learned more about the so-called "migrant crisis" from an article in "The Atlantic" from almost a year ago than I've learned from anything else since.

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First, why do we have a "crisis"?

Asylum is a special form of protection for migrants who are at risk of serious harm in their home country because of their religion, political affiliation, nationality, race, or membership in a particular social group. Many people approaching the Southwest border are trying to avail themselves of that protection. In an ideal world, asylum seekers would cross the U.S. border at a designated port of entry, present themselves to immigration officers, and register as applicants for asylum. Those who pass an initial interview—by convincing an asylum officer that they have a credible fear of persecution or torture if they are turned away—should then receive a court date, find a lawyer, and have a chance to prove to a judge that they qualify to enter the United States. If rejected, they can be removed.

Every step of this process is broken.

Source: Jersalem Demsas.

"Every step of this process is broken." That's why we have a crisis. But why is every step of the process broken? That, too, has a fairly simple answer. Our nation has two political parties. One has decided that it's in its partisan interest not to solve the problem, but to campaign on it instead. The other, deciding that it's impossible to solve the problem without the cooperation of both parties, has decided to just avoid the problem.

Demsas explores why cities like New York and Chicago have been so much more successful at absorbing tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees compared to their problems absorbing asylum seekers from our southern border. Likewise Demsas explores why cities like Miami, Los Angeles, even Houston have been more successful absorbing immigrants than New York and Chicago. Finally, Demsas explores why the United States in the past was more successful in absorbing immigrants than the US is today. In all cases, the root cause is not an unmanageable number of immigrants. The root cause is political dysfunction. And if there's one thing that's harder to fix than our broken immigration system, it's political dysfunction, especially when some politicians decide that NOT fixing it is to their own political advantage.

"A land of refuge,
Yet the road is paved with pain,
Immigrants lost still."
—h/t ChatGPT