We are paying for America’s broken asylum system
To quote Billy Currington, immigration just “ain’t what it used to be.” For decades, migrants who crossed the border into the United States relied on word-of-mouth information spread through their networks back home. Now social media has changed the game, vastly expanding those networks.
In the world of migration, where U.S. policy is already a complex and everchanging labyrinth, misinformation and online scams run rampant, preying on people desperate to leave crumbling homes. And the narrative sells because it’s simple: Follow me. I’ve got a shortcut to the American Dream.
That’s the message Alfredo, a Mexican tour guide eager to leave his home in Chiapas, can’t stop thinking about. Hours spent on TikTok have convinced him that flying to Canada and then illegally crossing its border with the United States to claim asylum is his best bet to win a better life for him and his family.
For the Biden administration, countering that kind of misinformation has been about as successful as Joe Biden’s attempts to court MAGA voters. It’s no good, warning about the dangers and consequences of illegally crossing into the U.S., correcting wrong information and explaining the legal alternatives. Evidence shows these kinds of information campaigns do relatively little to change behavior even while they do significantly increase awareness. Relying on social media companies with zero financial incentive to crack down on smuggler networks isn’t enough either. And leaders in the U.S. and the U.K., which has faced its own crisis, are getting desperate. The British government recently announced a plan to pay influencers to scare people into staying put.
But leaders don’t need to spend money on influencers to scare would-be migrants. Scroll through “immigration TikTok” for long enough and you’ll find many, many heartbreaking postspleading for help locating migrants who went missing on the journey. Others feature diapered toddlers whose parents didn’t make it out of the jungle, and a desperate search for family who can care for them. Even those videos, it seems, aren’t enough to dissuade people.
If we truly hope to “secure our border” and rebuild a safe, orderly and humane immigration system, we need to realize that deterrence isn’t a solution. As evidenced by Gov. Greg Abbott’s $10 billion boondoggle to deploy razor wire, buoys and National Guard troops at the border, it’s nothing but a costly stopgap measure that makes for good re-election campaign material. Banning or severely limiting asylum isn’t a solution either. That much was clear from Title 42, which allowed the government to carry out over 2.5 million expulsions, only temporarily preventing people from claiming asylum and contributing to high rates of expelled migrants illegally re-entering the U.S. yet again.
To find solutions, first we need to take control of the narrative. That’s what Biden tried to do last month when he paid a visit to prospective donors at a River Oaks mansion in Houston. He put the blame for our border crisis squarely on the shoulders of his predecessor. If Donald Trump hadn’t used his influence to torpedo a bipartisan border bill in February, Biden argued, the United States would have 1,500 more border security agents, 100 more immigration judges and 4,300 more asylum officers to tackle the asylum case backlog.
But Trump isn’t the only one to blame. It’s also on the people with the power of the pocketbook. Congress has been too wrapped up in partisanship to do the hard work Americans have elected them to do. In the past 20 years, the U.S. has shelled out over $200 billion for immigration enforcement and less than $9 billion for immigration courts. They’ve let the system charged with processing humanitarian cases, such as asylum and refugee applications, buckle under a caseload weight it wasn’t designed to handle.
If you’re an immigrant in the United States, chances are you’ve interacted with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The sprawling agency handles all things related to legal immigration, from adjudicating immigration and naturalization petitions and issuing work permits, to processing humanitarian cases such as asylum and refugee applications. Unlike other federal agencies, its budget is almost entirely funded via user fees, money paid by immigrants and their family or employer sponsors when they file immigration applications. Asylum and refugee processing are the exception: USCIS doesn’t charge fees for those humanitarian services.
When the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services became a standalone agency in the early aughts, only 5% of its budget was dedicated to humanitarian cases. In 2022, USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou explained to Congress that their humanitarian workload had ballooned to nearly 20% of its budget.
With a growing share of USCIS’ mandate earning them no revenue, and still recovering from the pandemic and abrupt changes during the Trump administration, the agency has relied on emergency appropriations from Congress to keep it limping along. But even the $87 million appropriated by Congress in emergency funds for USCIS processing in 2023 was barely a tenth of what the administration estimated it would need to reduce backlogs and meet the refugee target.
When those appropriations don’t cut it, USCIS is forced to scrounge beneath the couch cushions to look for extra change. They’re asking immigrants to pay up. But also the businesses and employers who sponsor them.
Beginning this month, American employers will now pay between 70% to 201% more to sponsor immigrant employees. USCIS will also charge them a new $600 Asylum Program Fee when filing certain forms. According to a National Foundation for American Policy estimate, most companies will now spend approximately $9,400 on a first-time H-1B visa petition for a highskilled foreign national, assuming premium processing and average attorney fees, and up to $18,000 if the company files to extend the visa.
I’ll never forget seeing dozens of international student friends educated at Princeton University have to leave the U.S. because no employer was willing to sponsor them in 2021. I can only imagine how much harder it will be now for bright U.S.-educated students to stay post-graduation. And for American companies to hire the talent they need.
We’re stifling and choking off legal immigration to patch the broken asylum system. That’s upside down. We need more legal pathways and a well-funded system that can adequately screen and process asylum-seekers.
“It’s become a self-defeating system,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, told me after explaining the USCIS fee hike. “We’ve kicked the can so far down the road congressionally that it’s become a dire situation.”
Biden’s attempts to control the narrative perpetuated on social media haven’t worked for one simple reason: Nobody believes him.
People such as Alfredo are hearing about family members and friends who touch U.S. soil, claim asylum and stay for years. They may not get the full story — about how hard it is to find a decent job, housing, health care, or to live every day in an uncertain legal limbo — but it’s enough to give them hope.
It would be much harder to maintain the narrative of an “open border” if a well-financed system actually administered the rule of law in a timely, orderly and just way.
So long as Congress ignores the urgent funding gaps that are sinking our legal immigration system, claiming asylum will remain the only option for many — a tempting if slippery shortcut for anybody hoping to make it in the United States.
Regina Lankenau is assistant op-ed editor and a member of the Houston Chronicle editorial board. She can be reached at regina.lankenau@houstonchronicle.com.