2024 US Budget to Fund Wars While Gutting Asylum
The Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) stands against any budget proposals that support war crimes and/or increased border enforcement.
As of December 13th, 2023, the Biden administration and Congress are considering a budget that contains unrestricted funds for detention, border militarization, and the dismantling of current asylum laws as well as increased funding of war and genocide in Ukraine and Israel. These proposals perpetuate harmful policies that will disproportionately impact Black migrants. BAJI continues to demand humane immigration policies and that federal funds not be used to support violence, death, and destruction domestically and globally.
Last week, Republicans blocked a $111 billion emergency spending bill, which includes about $50 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, and made a counteroffer that amounted to a Trump-era wish list for enforcement at the US/Mexico border. Republicans propose to make it more difficult to receive asylum in the United States by supporting policies that would effectively restore the Remain in Mexico and Title 42 policies. Further, Republicans would like to restrict humanitarian parole, a policy allowing non-citizens to enter the US as they await a decision on their immigration application.
Republicans are using this administration’s warmongering to push restrictive immigration policies that include:
1. Demanding Biden restart border wall construction
2. Limiting migrants’ ability to enter or stay in the country:
a. Under the proposed blueprint, migrants become ineligible for asylum if they transited through a third country and must present themselves at a port of entry, as opposed to between land crossings
b. The asylum screening standard for “credible fear of persecution” would also be raised from “significant possibility” to “more likely than not.”
c. Expedited removal, a much-criticized process that allows the US to rapidly deport newly arriving migrants without basic due process, would be expanded.
3. Humanitarian parole, which, unlike asylum, does not provide a direct path to citizenship, would be restricted, directing the administration to use it rarely and only for aliens outside the United States. Grants of parole would be limited to one year or less. Humanitarian parole has allowed thousands of migrants fleeing war and violence to come to the United States.
4. The proposal elevates Trump’s Title 42 policy into asylum law instead of the already problematic public health policy that it was.
The President and any elected member in Congress who is willing to accept these immigration policies are ignoring the calls of directly impacted communities. Rather than offer protections, they are continuing to allow our most vulnerable communities to be the first on the chopping block.
BAJI demands that Congress reject the permanent changes to asylum law being requested by Republicans that will only be used to expedite rapid deportations, increase detentions, and contribute to harmful border policies and military violence. Instead, we implore Congress to support and pass funding for additional processing, humane policies, and much-needed humanitarian resources and services that Black migrants want and need.