Reforming the Asylum Process

I tend to agree with the editors of Bloomberg on reforming our obviously broken asylum process:

Central America’s desperate migrants won’t stop seeking sanctuary or a better life until conditions in their countries improve. That’s one of many reasons why the U.S. also has an interest in sustaining and increasing its foreign aid. And the flood of asylum applicants reflects, in part, the pull from relatives in the U.S., many of whom are either undocumented or have tenuous legal status. Comprehensive immigration reform is needed to address that.

In the meantime, instead of trying to restrict access to asylum through questionable or outright illegal executive orders, the U.S. should be processing applications more humanely and expeditiously. It really isn’t complicated. In this instance, greater administrative efficiency is the key to protecting the vulnerable and upholding American values and interests.

IMO the reforms should take several forms:

1. We need more immigration judges and more people to administer the system.
2. Immigration judges need more oversight. When asylum cases granted range from 3% to 91% within the same district, the decisions are pretty apparently arbitrary and capricious. The Supreme Court has responsibility for this oversight. They need to act. If they demur from acting, they should be replaced with justices who will. It’s part of their jobs.
3. Congress should make the rules much clearer, leaving less room for discretion. One obvious reform: those charging the barriers as recently to enter illegally should be banned from seeking asylum.

I also agree that we need comprehensive immigration reform but I suspect that my views of the contours of such reform would be quite different from those of the editors of Bloomberg. So, for example, I think there should be very stiff penalties for abuses of H1-B or L1 visas, something of which the editors would probably not approve.