United Nations ‘profoundly concerned’ by US asylum restrictions | BBC News

in all situations we reiterate that seeking Asylum is a fundamental human right and access to Asylum for those uh in need is Paramount and any person who claims to have a well-founded fear of being persecuted in their country of origin should have access to Safe territory and have this claim assessed before being subject to deportation or removal joining me to discuss Professor James hollyfield he is professor of political science and director of the Tower Center at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas Texas thank you thank you very much for being with us I I I've been reading comments and polls in the Wall Street Journal today the majority of people do blame the president for the chaos for ripping up the orders that his predecessor signed they do not blame the Republicans who blocked and stood in the way of a bipartisan program of reforms is he stuck with that or can he change the picture before election day well certainly this is a very calculated move on the part of the Biden Administration uh not unexpected uh he's trying here to call the Republic Bluff since Trump and the Republicans in the house blocked the the bipartisan agreement which was a very harsh policy that passed the Senate um So eventually he was going to try to impose as much of his policy he could through executive action by decree but of course there's a limit to how much he can do here uh he he can't uh put more funds to border patrol control or more funds to immigration judges Asylum hearings uh but he's going to do what he can again to try to take this issue away from uh from his Republican opponents the politics on this has shifted um I remember the row among Democrats When Donald Trump brought in title 42 and always if you wanted border reform and you were negotiating with the Democrats it always came with the quid proquo of doing something for the dreamers the children of the migrant who'd come um and you being in Paris will know that this is very much the direction of travel here in Europe um the gap on policy between the supposed moderates and the hardliners when it comes to immigration is shrinking isn't it yes it certainly is and I'm in Paris France not Paris Texas I might add oh okay you'll still know that the direction of travel though I'm not I'm not here to welcome President Biden who is arriving you know for the D-Day um anniversary but you're absolutely right the politics of immigration has been shifting radically Across the Western World and we see mainstream politicians on both the right and the left moving more uh uh in the direction of of hard right policies and the hopes that this will gain them more votes um if you look at the record on this it's it's not been very successful I mean already in the UK you can see that uh prime minister sunak has been trying to position himself further to the right to head off votes on the far right from Reform Party in Nigel farage and essentially Biden is doing the same thing here but he wants to try to demonstrate uh that he's the master of the game and that he's got control of this uh big humanitarian crisis uh at at the border uh and I'm sure they're very much watching the polls to see if this is going to move the needle at more people supporting Biden coming tougher on On the Border I wonder if you could give me some quick info on two technical issues one is he doesn't control the money that's Congress uh so he might put the order in place how effective will it be in practice and secondly he's saying that it doesn't apply to unaccompanied minors isn't there a risk that that actually exacerbates the problem well there's some very fine lines in the policy uh Biden is doing the best he can to try to reassure uh the pro imigration or liberal left that he's not just going back to the Trump policies we're not going to have a ban on Muslim immigrants we're not going to be separating families uh people are still going to have a right to uh to apply for Asylum uh we're just not going to take people he does not want to he wants to discourage people from coming uh to the border between the points of Entry uh and of course there's going to be this uh this very funny number numbers game how are they going to count how many people are are coming to the Border uh day to day week to week uh so my guess is that in the short term this is going to create a lot more chaos a lot more Havoc at the southern border of the United States and don't forget there's another country another state involved in this and that's Mexico and Mexico just had an election so we don't know exactly what the the agreements were that were reached between uh the Biden Administration and the amlo government in Mexico but one thing your viewers should be aware of is the numbers have fallen by half over the past few months so they're going down and I think Biden with this policy he wants to see the numbers keep going down and he wants Americans to see that we have control of the Border uh and that we're not in a in a in a constant state of Crisis here okay is is Paris Texas as nice as Paris France uh they're very different places I mean there's an Eiffel Tower in Paris Texas which which is I think over an oil well uh a miniature version of the Eiffel Tower so they are quite different um and but both of them have their attractions I would say and just finally one point one point I want to make before we end is that with the US advocating its its leadership on this issue you know this is going to have worldwide consequences it's going to really undermine the international Refugee regime when the strongest most powerful country uh backs away from it it's a really good point and we maybe pick that up in Europe on Sunday night when we go to the uh results of the European elections uh really good to talk to you James holfield thank you very much thank you

Channel: BBC News

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Keywords: bbc, bbc news, news, world news, breaking news, us news, world, america, usa, usa news, india news

Id: 6mR9LZiXyUE

Length: 6min 9sec (369 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 05 2024