Jose David Castillo, with flashlight, helps find open beds for a family looking for a place to rest at night inside a shelter for for migrants and asylum-seekers in Tijuana. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)

People walk up a ramp at the El Chaparral pedestrian border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico. Asylum-seekers can apply to enter the U.S. at this location. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)

Winning asylum in the United States is far from a sure thing in ordinary times, but that’s especially true for Central American migrants today due to a surge in migration, recent policy changes and overloaded border-security agencies and immigration courts.

A Syracuse University report based on 2018 asylum applications and immigration-court results shows that asylum-seekers from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala were granted asylum less often than the 35% acceptance rate for migrants overall.

For Salvadorans, the acceptance rate was 23.5%; for Hondurans, it was 21.2%; and for Guatemalans, it was 18.8%.

At the same time that it’s gotten harder to win asylum, more and more migrants have been seeking protection in the United States without legal assistance.

Migrants who are represented by an attorney are far more likely to win their cases than those who are not; 90% of asylum-seekers without an attorney were denied in 2017. Roughly half of those with attorneys were denied, researchers at Syracuse found.

The migrant population itself has also dramatically changed.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released a border-crisis report in April raising the alarm about “the large-scale influx of (migrant families with children),” which the agency described as a new phenomenon compared to previous immigration waves.

Apprehensions of families with children represented just 1 percent of migrants in March 2017, the report says; today they make up nearly 60% of the total.

Some of those children, it says, are used as pawns by both criminal smuggling organizations and adult migrants to increase the odds of gaining entry into the United States.

More than 53,000 migrants with children in tow were apprehended by the Border Patrol in March of this year alone. DHS says that if numbers like this hold, apprehensions of families for this fiscal year could top half a million, a 600% increase over the previous fiscal year.

This new wave of migration from Central America has worsened to the point the Border Patrol isn’t fully able to function, the DHS report says. It has “overwhelmed the entire government and brought our border security and immigration management systems to the point of collapse.”

Among other proposals, DHS says it wants Congress to allocate funds for hiring more immigration judges and for setting up three or four regional processing centers along the border to accommodate the increased influx. It’s asking for new legislation to speed up the asylum process, so that hearings and final decisions happen in 20 or 30 days, compared to the current wait times of up to two years.

Complicating matters further is the Trump administration’s shifting guidance on border security and immigration.

By law, the U.S. cannot turn away immigrants seeking asylum, though it can deny claims if they don’t meet eligibility requirements. But in January, the administration started requiring asylum-seekers at the southern border to go back and wait in Mexico until their scheduled hearings.

A federal judge in April ordered the Trump administration to halt the so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy, then ran up against court challenges soon after, but the next month the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the program to continue while the legal challenge proceeds.

Then, in July, the Trump administration made the most dramatic shift yet, putting in new rules that say that migrants who pass through another country on their way to the U.S. will be ineligible for asylum. That would make it all but impossible for the thousands of migrants who pass through Mexico from Central America, Haiti, and other countries to win asylum. The rule, which is also being challenged in court, also applies to children who cross the border alone.

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The policy package both facilitates deportation of failed asylum seekers and migrants’ access to the labor market.

BERLIN — Germany on Friday passed a controversial package of bills bringing major changes to the country’s asylum and immigration policy following a fierce debate in parliament.

The package included the so-called Geordnete-Rückkehr-Gesetz — or “Orderly Return Law” — which facilitates the deportation of failed asylum seekers and expands related powers of police and immigration authorities.

The new law’s aim, according to its draft version, is to “significantly increase” the proportion of successful deportations. Approximately half of the planned 188,000 deportations from Germany since 2015 failed or were not carried out, according to interior ministry data.

Yet the policy package also included measures to improve access to Germany’s labor market for skilled migrants. For instance, migrants without asylum status who arrived before last summer will be able to stay for the time being if they have a job and speak German. In addition, it scrapped previous rules that required German employers to prove that they found no German or other EU citizen to take the job in order to employ a skilled non-EU migrant.

The package was mired in controversy, in particular due to the deportation legislation, and prompted a fierce debate in parliament, underscoring the extent to which Germany’s political landscape remains divided over migration.

Ahead of Friday’s Bundestag debate, the Greens and the far-left Die Linke party had unsuccessfully tried to remove the vote on the legislative package, which they said infringed on asylum seekers’ rights and had been rushed through parliament, from the agenda.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer from the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), insisted that the legislation was necessary to ensure failed asylum seekers would be deported.

“This is a turning point in our migration policy,” Seehofer said in the Bundestag, adding that in his eyes “this migration package creates a set of rules that respects humanity and order.” He also underlined that the importance of granting foreign skilled workers better access to Germany’s labor market.

Ulla Jelpke, a member of Die Linke, labeled the new legislation a “catalog of atrocities” and said it amounts to “currying favor with racists.” Jörg Schindler, Die Linke’s secretary-general, called the policy package “unconstitutional.”

The Greens’ Filiz Polat spoke of a “dark day for democracy” and also raised concerns that aspects of the law might not be compatible with Germany’s constitution.

Meanwhile, the far-right Alternative for Germany’s Gottfried Curio said that if so many deportations failed, “maybe we should protect the borders.”

In an op-ed in Germany’s Handelsblatt on Friday, former German Social Democrat (SPD) leader Sigmar Gabriel expressed support for a more “robust asylum policy.”

He encouraged his party, which has tumbled in the polls and found itself in the worst crisis of its post-war history, to look towards Denmark, where the Social Democrats won Wednesday’s general election after campaigning on a tougher immigration stance.

“Mette Frederiksen has shown that the Socialists can win elections if they stand for a clear policy,” Gabriel wrote. “The German comrades are far from it.”

The Social Democrats’ decline has raised questions over the viability of Germany’s ailing coalition government, in which the SPD are the junior partner to Merkel’s CDU. A recent poll found a majority of Germans favor calling a snap election.

But on Friday, the CDU’s Thorsten Frei said his party’s coalition with the SPD was not in crisis, adding that the migration package passing was the best “proof for the grand coalition’s ability to take action.”

The returns law passed by 372 to 159 votes, with 111 abstentions. The labor market access law passed by 369 to 257 votes.

Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-passes-controversial-migration-law/

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