Pope and Immigration

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Pope Francis I Expected to Address Congress on Immigration 

Pope-mania has engulfed the United States, as the country welcomes Pope Francis I for his first visit as Pontiff. The spiritual leader of the Catholic Church has many purposes in visiting the country and his itinerary reflects those purposes. Speaker John Boehner invited His Holiness to address a joint session of Congress, and the Pope will do so today.

It is expected that immigration will be a motif in the Pope’s address. The Catholic church exerts all kinds of resources in protecting, feeding, and sheltering migrants and many organizations are on the frontlines at the border. The Pope’s message throughout his tenure has been to encourage countries to undertake more humane and family-unity based approaches to migration, trying to understand the dangerous situations and plight that migrants are escaping. It is a moral calling that He exhorts.

The Pope’s expected remarks on migration will conflict with the immigration politics that much of the country holds and beliefs that have been broadcast throughout the presidential primary season.

Considering the Pope’s general influence and moral authority, his remarks on immigration will be newsworthy. A livestream of his visit is available here.

Children & Unauthorized Parents

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Children of Removed Parents

Front and center of the primary election campaigns of presidential hopefuls is the issue of unauthorized immigration. Estimates of unauthorized migrants in the United States range from 11-12 million individuals. They come from all over the world, but much of the attention falls upon people from Central American countries, who are often escaping poverty, civil wars, gang warfare, and

The George W. Bush administration removed millions of unauthorized individuals and the Obama administration was record-setting in its number of removals. The current administration attempted to re-prioritize the removal system in November of last year through executive actions. Part of the revamp was instituting Deferred Action for Parents of Americans. This program was judicially nixed before started receiving applications. The purpose behind it was family unity.

A motivation behind DAPA was that over 5 million children are living without authorized parents. That means they are constantly living in threat of losing one or both parents. The children are American by virtue of birthright citizenship, another issue that has become a lightning rod in primary election politics. Two studies have been conducted by the Migration Policy Institute and Urban Institute with assistance from DHS and ICE. The Washington Post has summarized the results. They cover what happens to the children of parents who have been removed from the United States.

Increasing Asylum Ceiling

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White House Considering Asylum for Syrians

There are proposals to increase the Asylum cap, a topic this blog briefly covered this week. The president requests the asylum ceiling on each year and Congress signs off on that number. The cap this year is 70,000. This includes asylum grants in immigration court and affirmative asylum cases that USCIS hears.

The White House announced this week that it would welcome 10,000 Syrian refugees this upcoming year. The plight of Syrian, Afghani, Iraqi, and refugees from other countries in the Levant has been headline news for months, as civil wars and internal strife have predominated in those nations in recent years. Syria’s civil war has been particularly devastating. People have been deracinated from their homes, livelihoods, and communities. Migrants have been escaping to Southern Europe through the Mediterranean in immense numbers over recent months, often to tragic ends. Their resettlement has become an intensely divisive issue in the European Union. Some countries in the EU are staunchly against resettlement in their own countries or doing it in limited numbers.

To accommodate taking in more Syrians, proposals are suggested for increasing the asylum cap to 85,000 for Fiscal Year 2016 and 100,000 for Fiscal Year 2017. The increase is criticized for being an increase and it is lambasted for not doing enough to relieve the overall crisis. Very few Syrians have received asylum in the United States since the civil war began. General bad conditions (such as civil war, disease, famine) are not bases for asylum. Syria has been accorded TPS status.

Happy Constitution Day!

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Happy Constitution Day

Today, September 17, the United States celebrates Constitution Day. It commemorates the fact that the US Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787 (ratified in 1788). Schools across the country celebrate the day by holding civic-minded events. James Madison is known as the author of the charter. He would later become the Secretary of State and our fourth president. He has both a university and many states have a ‘Madison County’ in honor of him. The original Constitution resides in the National Archives Building.

The Constitution was not the first law of the land. Once the colonies defeated the British in the Revolutionary War, the government they created was a loose federation of semi-autonomous nation states. The thirteen colonies became thirteen states, but the adopted Articles of Confederation were inappropriate to forming a cohesive nation. Each state had its own currency and laws that made commerce, travel, and coexistence difficult. The amount and types of power that the federal government should exercise versus individual state autonomy is an issue that remains contentious and inherent to American political thought in the present.

The Constitution initially contained ten Amendments, known as the Bill of Rights. As the Constitution was being drafted, Federalists and anti-Federalists argued over the nature of the new political system. Federalists, such as Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton demanded a stronger central government that could control finances. Anti-federalists, such as Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, were weary of a strong federal government, feeling that the Revolutionary War’s purpose was to overthrow faraway central power in favor of local governance. The Bill of Rights can be viewed as a limitation of the government’s power, in homage to the wishes of the anti-Federalists.

While the Bill of Rights were signed on September 17, 1787, the Fourteen Amendment was not ratified until July 9, 1868. Along with the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, they are known as the Civil War amendments. The Fourteenth Amendment contains many powers – due process, equal protection, privileges or immunities. It also contains the Citizenship Clause, granting birthright citizenship. By merely being born in the United States, a person is a United States citizen. There is no lineage issue of worrying about parental heritage or citizenship. Two foreign nationals can give birth to an American. That by itself does not lead to any immigration benefits to the parents. Birthright citizenship has been a cornerstone of American law for nearly 150 years. It has become a hotrod issue in American politics, as some candidates have harangued the concept as detrimental and as something to abolish. Candidates whose platforms include immigration restriction often target it as an unnecessary benefit that rewards unauthorized migrants for giving birth in the US.

Take a Constitution Quiz

Citizenship Quizzes

Constitution Facts

 

Asylum Schedule

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USCIS Asylum Schedule Released

USCIS has released its scheduling priority dates for affirmative asylum interviews. A cursory glance reveals that the eight asylum offices are backlogged, with Los Angeles even being four years behind. At the end of 2014, the Asylum Division decided to prioritize interviews in the following order: 1) applications already scheduled for an interview but needed to be rescheduled; 2) applications filed by children; 3) all others based on the order they were received. The majority of the offices are around two years behind, meaning they are just scheduling interviews currently for applications received in the summer of 2013. The interview is the final step in the affirmative asylum process.

Attaining asylum is a pathway to permanent residence and if desired, naturalization. While the standards for asylum and refugee status are deeply steeped in international accords and UN guidelines, United States case law on the subject has helped to develop what qualifies for asylum. A foreign national who is facing persecution in her home country, either having suffered it already or fearing it in the future, may apply for asylum affirmatively in the United States. That application must be filed within a year of arrival. It is a difficult and arduous application that requires corroborating evidence and persecution based on statutorily enumerated grounds. Just living in a country with civil war, epidemics, or violence is not enough to win asylum. Each year, the president asks for a certain number of asylees and Congress approves that number (“Refugee Ceiling“). The number this year is 70,000.

The two year wait can be difficult on applicants, who can apply for employment authorization only after the application has been pending for months. The nature of the backlog may be attributed to the surge of unaccompanied minors who crossed the border in the summer of 2014, many of whom are asylum seekers. Their opportunity for asylum is prioritized, as per the scheduling bulletin. Asylum and refugee status have been in the news lately because of Syrians fleeing Syria for asylum in European countries.

 

Resources:

Modern Trends in Asylum for 2014

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Asylum is addressed in Article 14)

The 1951 and 1967 UN Conventions on the Status of Refugees

United States Refugee Act of 1980 

Office of Refugee Resettlement

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

More USCIS Asylum Statistics

Refugee Council Statistics