Yesterday, Tuesday, February 21, the U.S. government around Joe Biden presented the new immigration regulations already announced in January. After a 30-day discussion phase, it is set to replace the immigration regulations from the times of the Trump administration, which have been in place ever since the beginning of Corona and currently still determine US immigration policy. Biden is not merely following in Trump’s footsteps with this new regulation, no – this new asylum policy is even more reactionary than Trump’s ever was.
May marks the end of the policy nicknamed “Title 42,” which has massively restricted asylum rights in the U.S. for the past 3 years as part of the Corona measures. U.S. authorities were and currently still are allowed by this order to deny immigrants entry into the country at U.S. borders under the guise of “health protection.” According to figures provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, over 2.5 million asylum seekers have already been denied entry at the southern border of the United States in the three years since this order was invoked in March 2020.
The invocation of Title 42 under Trump caused much uproar at the time. As part of the Biden’s campaign, this immigration policy should have already stopped long ago, but was extended time after time. Now, however, this “Trump asylum policy”, which by the way lasted longer under Biden than under Trump himself, is finally to be dropped and something new is to come: something even more reactionary.
Starting in May, it will no longer be possible to apply for asylum within the borders of the United States. This will only be possible from abroad, making it impossible for refugees who immediately cross the border out of necessity to continue to apply for asylum. To this end, an app is then to be introduced through which one can request an appointment with the authorities, but only before crossing the border. A violation of this new immigration regulation will result in a 5-year ban before one can apply for asylum again.
Thousands of people, mainly from Latin America, cross the U.S.-Mexico border into the U.S. every day; estimates put the number at around 200,000 people per month. They flee from the immense exploitation and oppression they experience in the backyard of Yankee imperialism and hope to build a new life in the U.S. In addition, there are millions of people who have been living in the U.S. illegally now for years and hope to gain the right to stay legally one day. This perspective is now being robbed from them by this reactionary new immigration policy. For them, there is no longer any prospect of ever legally continuing their life in the U.S. that they have built up already. This, of course, opens the door for the U.S. government to raise the terror against this segment of the population to an even higher degree. As if it were not hard enough to live as an immigrant in a country where not a single month goes by without new racist murders by the police. In a country where the deportation of you and your family by the deportation authority ICE is an omnipresent threat anyway.
The obviously cynical part of all this is, of course, that this new law is being brought to life by current U.S. President Joe Biden. The very Biden whose entire electoral victory was based on being, after all, “no Trump,” is now introducing an even more blatant, even more reactionary asylum policy than a Trump ever did. Since then, Biden is being held up as the great break with the Trump era, yet he was always just more of the same. The only difference in immigration policy between the two is that Biden doesn’t constantly ramble on in delusions of grandeur about wanting to build a giant wall on the U.S.-Mexico border – not yet.
