President Biden’s executive order on migrant asylum

President Joe Biden officially signed an executive order to decrease the number of undocumented immigrants seeking asylum as they cross the U.S. border after Congress failed to take action.

There were over 2,500 immigrants coming through border ports daily. The order would shut down asylum requests at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The number declined to only 1,500 immigrants from the border reopening. The number of crossings has decreased partially from a stepped-up effort from Mexico.

Republicans who settled on the immigration bill a few months ago rejected it under the influence of former President Donald Trump.

We welcomed Delia Salvatierra of Salvatierra Law Group to “Arizona Horizon” to further discuss this topic.

“This order is a proclamation under the Immigration Nationality Act that permits the President to have wide, sweeping power to exclude individuals, non-citizens, who’s a threat to the United States,” Salvatierra said. “The President has determined that the large number of people coming across the border is a threat to the United States because Border Patrol does not have the resources to process these individuals in a timely and lawful way.”

This executive order only applies to non-citizens who do not have authority to enter, according to Salvatierra. She described them as individuals who present themselves at a port of entry at the southern border seeking asylum.

“There is a negotiation with Mexico that these individuals can return and remain in Mexico, and that’s about it,” Salvatierra said.

“Our borders, our shores have always been, in the United States, a place of refuge for people who legitimately seek asylum,” Salvatierra said. “However, in recent years, due to how the Western Hemisphere has dealt with tragedy, wars, hunger, famine, more and more people are coming to our shores, and they’re not coming to seek asylum. They’re coming for economic reasons. But our asylum laws do not embrace economic reasons; they embrace persecution by governments and people that governments and foreign countries can’t control.”