the_lamou t1_j0zucbk wrote
Reply to comment by dust1990 in Adams warns migrant flood will impact NYC’s safety and ‘basic services’ by NYY657545
>But why would you increase funding for something, where there is known rampant fraud and create a feedback loop?
Because despite your repeated and entirely unfounded claims, there is not rampant fraud in the asylum program. And what fraud is present tends to come not from the poor folks fleeing economic and climate disaster in Central and South America on foot, but rather from the relatively wealthy immigrants who fly in to major airports and use the asylum system to get around the broken immigration system.
Or to put it another way, how "fraudulent" do you think a refugee's story is if they spend months literally walking through the jungle along one of the most dangerous human migratory pathways in the world in order to get asylum? Their claim may ultimately get rejected because the asylum system is also horribly broken (I know, I went through it!) but the fact that they get denied on a technically does not change the fact that they are fleeing something so terrible that they are willing to risk a horrible death over thousands of miles of grueling terrain to escape it. And it's our responsibility to help them because at the end of the day, Latin America is largely in the state it's in because the US fucked it badly and repeatedly over the last 100 years.
dust1990 t1_j100wcb wrote
Walking through the jungle sounds horrific. And the people who choose to do that must be in desperate circumstances. But the test for asylum isn’t being in desperate circumstances. It is actual or fear of persecution. It’s a high bar, but that is the law. It’s not statistically possible for this increase in asylum seekers to actually be victims of persecution.
the_lamou t1_j104xxm wrote
>It is actual or fear of persecution.
Eh, sort of but not really. But close enough. My point, though, isn't that all of these people are fleeing persecution. My point is that they are not defrauding the system, they just fail to understand a nuanced and technical but if administrative law. Making a mistake isn't the same thing as fraud.
>It’s not statistically possible for this increase in asylum seekers to actually be victims of persecution.
This is just completely incorrect, as there are tons of things that can happen that increase the number of valid asylum seekers. And, in fact, we've actually seen several of those things happen in the last couple of years: Venezuela's economic collapse which led to protests and then a serious crackdown on protesters and activists, El Salvador's dudebro president going to war against the press and political opposition, political violence in Brazil (though hopefully that's calming down now.)
And this is validated because the makeup of refugees has actually shifted — a lot of the ones involved in the current migration waves are Venezuelan and El Salvadorian.
dust1990 t1_j105s8t wrote
If some human trafficker tells you to make up a story that’s not true and you use that story you don’t exactly have clean hands. There’s a whole cottage industry for asylum coaching. If that’s not fraud, what is?
the_lamou t1_j107iry wrote
No, if a human traffickers tells you to make up a story, it's not on you, because the important thing about human trafficking is that it's involuntary.
>There’s a whole cottage industry for asylum coaching.
Yes, it's called "immigration law." Do you also call criminal lawyers "crime coaching?"
dust1990 t1_j10b2yo wrote
Look it’s a clear you want to rubber stamp all of these migrants to grant them asylum. That’s your right to have that political opinion. But you should know that’s a horrible policy. There’s billions in this world who live in or near poverty that would jump at the chance for us citizenship. It’s a horrible policy to just let anyone in that wants to because it’s unrealistic and unfair to the people who wait sometimes decades following the legal immigration route.
dust1990 t1_j10a1hp wrote
A lawyer that coaches a client to lie to an Immigration officer or an ALJ is subject to sanctions, ethics violations or disbarment.
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