Reject Biden’s Extreme Asylum Restrictions!

What’s Happening?

Anti-immigrant senators are using the Biden Administration’s attempt to ensure aid to Ukraine, Israel, and other countries to impose harsher restrictions on refugees and asylum seekers at the border. 

Senators from both sides are stripping humane legal pathways for migrants and asylum seekers in order to secure this aid. The policies being discussed include a transit ban to keep people at the border from accessing asylum, placing an arbitrary cap on granting asylum, limiting and expanding expedited removal, allowing DHS to round up and deport people nationwide. These extreme measures not only put migrants and asylum seekers at the border at risk, but also endanger other immigrant communities in the United States. 

But now, President Biden is negotiating a devastating deal that would trade away time-honored refugee protections, violating national and international laws. The deal under discussion could:  

• Impose higher and more subjective standards for initial asylum screenings, making the “credible fear standard” even more difficult to meet.
• Codify Biden’s “asylum ban,” preventing individuals who have transited through a third country without seeking asylum there or requesting an appointment through the CBP One app from seeking asylum in the United States. This puts asylum seekers in a dangerous situation where they could be automatically sent back to their countries where they could face violence, persecution, or even death. 
• Eliminate or weaken the effective and long-standing system of parole, which currently gives thousands of people entry into the U.S. for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”

What Can You Do?

Aid to other countries should never come at the expense of migrants and asylum seekers at the border. We need advocates and allies like you to stand up against these harmful immigration practices.

You can take a stand by calling your senators and urge them NOT to trade away the right to seek asylum. These are the steps to take: 

1. Call the Congressional Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

2. Ask to be transferred to your senator’s office and use the following script:

“My name is [NAME], from [CITY, TOWN, STATE, ZIP CODE], I am urging Senator [YOUR SENATOR] to oppose any concessions that trade away long-standing commitments to the right to asylum.. This weakening of asylum rights would be extremely harmful and dangerous for migrants seeking refuge and for immigrant communities across the U.S. The lives of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers should never be used as a bargaining chip.”