As large groups of Central American migrants approach the U.S. border, the Trump administration is making it more difficult for them to apply for asylum. Is the president undermining the original concept of asylum, or is he restoring it? Guest: Caitlin Dickerson, who covers immigration for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
Duration
28m
Broadcast on
27 Nov 2018
Audio Format
other
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As large groups of Central American migrants approach the U.S. border, the Trump administration is making it more difficult for them to apply for asylum. Is the president undermining the original concept of asylum, or is he restoring it? Guest: Caitlin Dickerson, who covers immigration for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
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In 1939, a steamliner called the SS St. Louis fleas Nazi Germany with about 900 Jewish passengers on board, and they're seeking protection. But they're turned away from the United States, and the American State Department's reasoning for turning the boat away is that essentially the passengers needed to wait their turn, that they hadn't applied through the proper process or entry into the United States, and so they weren't eligible. And they're also turned away from Cuba, from Panama, Uruguay, Paraguay, Canada, and Argentina. So ultimately, the boat is turned around, and it ends up back in Europe, and the passengers are sprinkled across the region. But as Germany grows larger, several hundred of the passengers end up in Nazi death camps, and ultimately they're killed.
So it's stories like this that give birth to the modern concept of asylum. Caitlyn Dickerson covers immigration for the times. Out of World War II, the United States and its allies decide that they can never again turn away people seeking refuge like they had during the Holocaust. For today, we realize that our half of the world, the American half, cannot remain well if the other half is sick. And it's at a UN Convention on Refugees in 1951, which takes place in Geneva, that they agree to this concept called non-refoulement. It's a French idea, which means essentially not returning people to situations that are dangerous. We realize that we must rehabilitate these displaced persons for our own interest and self-preservation, as well as theirs. The idea for the countries that sign on is to put the onus on themselves. So it's not just saying we can't oppress people based on various forms of racism or discrimination, but that if foreign governments are oppressing people, it's our responsibility to offer them a safe haven. That's why this Belgian baby or Russian baby or French baby or Polish baby is today under an army willing blanket marked US. And what happens as a result of this new understanding of how to treat outsiders in harm's way? So this understanding is codified into American immigration law, and we begin to usher in groups of people who are in need of protection. And on paper, how are we deciding in the US who would be granted asylum in this era? So in order to get asylum in this era, a person has to prove that they're facing persecution in their home country. It can be persecution directly by their own government or persecution that their government isn't protecting them from. But there's more. That would be too simple and too low a bar that too many people, quite frankly, would qualify for. And so the law goes even further. It lays out five categories of persecution that an asylum seeker has to prove. So either persecution based on their race, their nationality, their religion, their political views, or their participation in what's called a particular social group. But it's not as if we suddenly have an entirely altruistic open door policy where anybody can come from anywhere. It's nowhere near, in fact. And you see that there's actually a lot of strategy and politics involved from the very beginning. So for example, the types of people that the United States begins
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As large groups of Central American migrants approach the U.S. border, the Trump administration is making it more difficult for them to apply for asylum. Is the president undermining the original concept of asylum, or is he restoring it? Guest: Caitlin Dickerson, who covers immigration for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.