WASHINGTON – The Biden administration’s seemingly lackadaisical approach to the global migration crisis is “unsustainable,” British Home Secretary Suella Braverman plans to argue in meetings with officials from the Justice and Homeland Security departments this week.
“Illegal migration and the unprecedented mass movement of people around the world are placing unsustainable pressures on the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe,” Braverman said in a statement before traveling to the United States on Monday evening.
“If we fail to address these challenges, our political institutions risk losing their democratic legitimacy,” he added.
Braverman plans to argue that the United States and its European allies should tighten their definitions of refugees who are allowed to seek safe harbor.
International focus
During his three-day trip, Braverman will meet with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick Garland to discuss ways to stem the flow of immigrants entering both the United Kingdom and the United States illegally and address organized immigration crime, the British Home Office said in a statement.
British Home Secretary Suella BravermanAP
Braverman – herself the daughter of Indian immigrants to the UK – also plans to “present a plan for how other countries can combat this crisis,” in a speech at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, where she will call for international changes to which Westerners the world treated as legitimate asylum seekers.
“Seeking asylum and seeking better economic prospects are not the same. Seeking refuge in the first safe country to reach or comparing prices to find your preferred destination is not the same,” he plans to say, according to excerpts from his prepared remarks. “Being trafficked… and being smuggled (i.e. asking someone to smuggle you into a country) are not the same thing.”
Braverman believes that the global asylum framework, based on the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, established to help resettle people fleeing the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, “allows for the fusion of these categories, creating[ing] enormous incentives for illegal migration.”
A migrant tries to pass under a wire fence after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico to the United States. James Keivom
The migrants crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into the United States before being processed and taken into custody by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on Saturday, September 23, 2023 in Eagle Pass, Texas.James Keivom
“It was an incredible achievement for its time. But more than 70 years later, we live in a completely different time,” he plans to say.
Citing an analysis by the UK Center for Policy Studies, he is expected to say that the UN convention “now confers the theoretical right to move to another country on at least 780 million people”.
“It is therefore incumbent on politicians and opinion leaders to ask themselves whether the refugee convention, and the way it has come to be interpreted by our courts, is fit for our modern era, or whether it needs reform.” she plans to say.
A Honduran mother crawled through barbed wire with her three children after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico.James Keivom
“Refugee” reform
Today, UN policy defines the term “refugee” as someone who, “due to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” cannot reside permanently. safely in your home. country.
But Braverman will argue that “we have seen in practice an interpretive shift away from ‘persecution’ in favor of something closer to a definition of ‘discrimination’.
“I think most of the public would recognize that those fleeing a real risk of death, torture, oppression or violence need protection,” he plans to say. “…But we will not be able to sustain an asylum system if, in fact, simply being gay or a woman and fearing discrimination in your home country is enough to qualify for protection.”
Migrants cross the Rio Grande from Mexico on September 25, 2023. James Keivom
Still, he believes there is a difference between “discrimination” and “persecution,” and those who suffer the latter should rightly be offered “sanctuary.”
Braverman will also advocate for the Western world to pressure refugees seeking asylum to first request safe harbor in the first nations they pass through.
“The status quo, where people can travel through multiple safe countries, and even reside in safe countries for years, while choosing their preferred destination to apply for asylum, is absurd and unsustainable,” he plans to say.
Migrants who crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into the United States are transported by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers by boat for processing. James Keivom
While the Biden administration has encouraged migrants seeking asylum to register in the first country they pass through, enforcement has been spotty as illegal border crossings increase.
“The refugee convention makes it clear that [refugee status] “It’s meant to apply to people ‘coming directly from territory where their life was threatened,'” Braverman plans to say. “The UK, along with many others, including the US, interpret this to mean that people should seek refuge and claim asylum in the first safe country they reach… but NGOs and others, including the UN agency for Refugees, they question it.”
Illegal immigration on the rise
Braverman’s visit comes as British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has prioritized “stopping the boats,” meaning the arrival of migrants in small boats from continental Europe.
Suella Braverman described the Biden administration’s response to the global migration crisis as “unsustainable.”
Braverman will note that, like many migrants at the US southern border, the “vast majority” of those asylum seekers “have passed through multiple safe countries and, in some cases, have resided in safe countries for several years.”
“In this sense, there is an argument that they should stop being treated as refugees when considering the legitimacy of their advancement,” he plans to say.
London’s work on the issue stands in stark contrast to the Biden administration, which has shown an unwillingness to address the crisis as illegal immigration numbers have continued to rise each year since the president took office in 2021.
Although White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday that Biden has “imposed consequences for those who do not have the legal basis to stay,” deporting more than 250,000 immigrants from the United States since May, new data DHS data released Friday show the problem continues. grow.
With one month left in fiscal year 2023, there were more than 2.86 million Border Patrol encounters with immigrants attempting to enter the U.S. illegally, up from 2.77 million in all of fiscal year 2022. , according to the DHS report.
With numbers rising, Jean-Pierre on Friday called U.S. immigration policies “a broken system” but blamed the Trump administration for its “intuition.”[ing] the immigration system for four years” and the Republican Party for “trying to undermine border security.”
“We would love to do this in a bipartisan way, but we don’t see it,” Jean-Pierre said. “What we’re seeing from House Republicans is wanting to defund DHS.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn