President Biden is struggling with a Gordian knot on immigration that there’s little he can do to untangle: The nation’s broken system is making it harder than it should be to manage the Afghan refugee crisis — and the Afghan refugee crisis is making it harder to fix the system.

By the numbers: If the military’s task of adding 50,000 spots to bases by mid-September to temporarily house Afghan refugees sounds like a lot, consider that there have been more than 1.2 million undocumented border crossings since last October.

• Meanwhile, pandemic protocols and disruptions have fueled so many backlogs that officials estimate that in the fiscal year closing at the end of this month, 100,000 green cards allotments could go to waste.

The big picture: The crisis around the U.S. withdrawal, fall of the Afghan government and rise of the Taliban is just the latest in a string of migration emergencies that have fallen on President Biden and brought into focus the shortfalls of the system.

• COVID-19, poverty and violence in Central America, an earthquake that rocked Haiti, actions by the Trump administration and in federal courts, and agencies that are understaffed and underfunded have left the administration jumping from one fire to the next.

What they’re saying: “Our resources are indeed stressed,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters on Friday, adding that what they have managed to accomplish for Afghans being brought to the U.S. “speaks to the extraordinary talent and dedication” of agencies’ workforces.

• “The Biden Administration is committed to rebuilding the broken immigration system it inherited after four years of chaos,” a White House spokesperson told Axios, adding that the administration has been “continuing to call on Congress to make long overdue reforms to U.S. immigration laws.“
• ”Asylum and other legal migration pathways should remain available to those seeking protection. But those not seeking protection or who don’t qualify will be returned to their country of origin.”

Details: DHS has taken responsibility for evacuating and welcoming vulnerable Afghans to the U.S. But its agencies are also in charge of enforcing the U.S.-Mexico border, authorizing parolees and other migrants for work in the country, approving temporary visas and running immigrant detention centers.

• The number of migrants and pending applications has only grown since Biden took office.
• The same Department of Health and Human Services agency that has had to scramble to fund and build emergency sites for unaccompanied kids is also charged with funding services for refugees — including resettled Afghans.
• The U.S. has brought in tens of thousands of Afghans using a special mechanism called parole — they join other migrants who have also been paroled into the U.S., including many who illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.
• Paperwork, including work authorization for Afghans and Central American asylum seekers alike, all flow through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which has long struggled with backlogs and funding shortfalls.
• The long, tedious Special Immigrant Visa process likely contributed to leaving many allies stranded in Afghanistan.

An unknown number of unaccompanied Afghan kids will join the record numbers of migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without their parents or guardians. Unaccompanied minors will be placed in shelters overseen by HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters.

• But more than one in five migrant kids have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent weeks, according two government sources familiar with internal data. And HHS has lost contact with one-in-three migrant kids released from shelters.
• As military bases prepare to house tens of thousands of Afghans, one base, Fort Bliss, has already been criticized for holding hundreds of unaccompanied minors in unfit conditions.

The pandemic, with its travel restrictions and consulate closures, already has disrupted the green card process, as the Wall Street Journal has reported.

• Tens of thousands diversity visa lottery winners —including hundreds from Afghanistan — risk losing their one-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Biden has also faced legal roadblocks to keeping his immigrations promises.

• The Supreme Court recently ruled that the administration must restart the Remain in Mexico program and courts have also blocked Biden’s deportation moratorium.
• More than 45 families separated under the Trump administration have been reunified under Biden. But many have arrived in need of housing and other financial assistance.

The bottom line: The administration is working on new regulations to expedite asylum, has sped up the SIV processes, has set up dozens of emergency shelters, has used parole to quickly bring Afghans to the U.S. and has begun offering vaccines to vulnerable migrants.

• But the emergencies keep coming, hitting a system in need of long-term fixes — one neglected by multiple administrations and Congress.

Source: https://www.axios.com/afghanistan-us-immigration-crisis-24ff0c58-acc7-4172-87a6-cf92fcff7972.html

The post Afghanistan feeds U.S. immigration crisis first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

It’s impossible, and a New York Times report on Tuesday detailed how the Trump administration is drowning in the reality ignored by Congress.

The paper said that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Lee Cissna told staff this week that operations abroad would close down so that resources could be directed “to handle the lengthy backlog in asylum applications from tens of thousands of migrants crossing the southern border every month.”

This means foreigners wanting to come to the U.S., Americans who want to move family from abroad, and otherwise legitimate asylum claims will no longer be processed in a timely, orderly way, if they are at all.

Immigration Services has been sounding the alarm on the overwhelming number of asylum cases since at least January 2018. The agency said then that it was instituting a policy to deal with the newest asylum cases first and work backward to older ones, a “last in, first out” approach meant to quickly deport illegal immigrants hoping to remain in the country at length.

That, of course, is to the detriment of asylum seekers who were here first and who may actually face persecution in their home countries. Those cases were pushed behind new ones of migrants who merely floated across the Rio Grande, hit the Texas bank, and found a border patrol agent to tell, “Asilo por favor!”

Back then, the agency said the backlog of asylum cases was more than 300,000. The backlog has more than doubled since then, due to our abhorrent open-border policy that allows anyone who sets foot on American soil to claim asylum — it’s very easy — guaranteeing them the right to stay here, at least until their court date, and up to 40 percent of asylum seekers don’t even turn up for those.

Democrats have opposed President Trump at every turn in addressing the southern border crisis. Even some Republicans have joined them. They will inevitably complain about the redirecting of resources to deal with the asylum backlog, too.

Members of Congress largely don’t have to deal with the ramifications of our immigration system, which the way it’s written says anyone who wants in and can set foot on land gets to stay. The violent MS-13 gang isn’t terrorizing their children’s schools. Their neighborhoods aren’t morphing into silos of completely foreign cultures.

OK, fine, I guess. But laws of supply and demand still apply, and right now, there is not enough supply to meet the demand at the southern border.

Something has to give. Unfortunately for any American wanting to adopt a foreign baby or any military service member wanting to bring their new spouse home from abroad, it might be them.

Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/overwhelmed-southern-border-now-wrecking-the-legal-immigration-process

The post Overwhelmed southern border now wrecking the legal immigration process first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.