Comment by zasz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zasz | Hacker News Reader

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These people are asylum seekers. What they are doing is literally not illegal. According to USCIS, asylum seekers must be physically present in the US to apply: To obtain asylum through the affirmative asylum process you must be physically present in the United States. You may apply for asylum status regardless of how you arrived in the United States or your current immigration status.

https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum/asylum/ob...

These people are being punished for following the law.

Additionally, there is no need to detain parents separately from children, and prior to the Trump administration, while deportations of asylum seekers did happen, families were not split up.

> Right now there are tens of thousands of broken black homes as one or two parents are in prison - where's the outrage for them and what about their human rights and their families?

Nice of you to pretend to care. Can I refer you to your closest Black Lives Matter chapter?

The legal way to claim asylum is to do so from official points of entry.

So if you are out of resources, cross the border at another point and then seek asylum the proper response it to lock up your kids.

>the proper response it to lock up your kids.

The irony is that the ninth circuit ruling mandating separation was done to prevent locking up children.

And no, it's not the proper response but it is the legal one as it stands today. GoP is working on a clean bill to do away with seperation. Democrats are expected to vote against it. So there's that.

No. The legal way to claim asylum is to do so within a year of entering the country, regardless of whether your entry was official[1].

The US is currently breaking its commitment to the 1951 UN convention on the rights of refugees by not ignoring "irregular entry."

[1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1158

Sure, they may apply for asylum. However, if they entered illegally, then they should be detained so that if they are not accepted for asylum then they can get deported.

First: They are not entering illegally if they intend to report within a year. Entering illegally is something that non-refugees do. This is why Nielsen's claims about "criminal refugees" are misleading at best -- she's talking about the "crime" of entering the country in the way we explicitly allow.

Second: Consider what an actual refugee crisis looks like. You can't detain hundreds of thousands of people crossing over a massive border, both for logistical and humanitarian reasons. That's why we're a signatory to the 1951 agreement.

This is probably what 45 is referring to when he talks about a "loophole" in immigration law, and why he feels politically safe asking for a legislative rather than executive solution. But to be absolutely clear: nothing about our current laws requires that we separate children from their parents, or detain refugee applicants indefinitely. Those are both cruel options, chosen to terrorize an already vulnerable population.

>First: They are not entering illegally if they intend to report within a year.

Illegal entry is illegal entry. I don't know what you're talking about. There is no exemption for asylum seekers.

>This is probably what 45 is referring to when he talks about a "loophole" in immigration law

The loophole is that the Trump administration is enforcing an existing law that was not enforced by previous administrations. You're advocating for following the precedent set by previous administrations and simply ignore the law again.

>and why he feels politically safe asking for a legislative rather than executive solution.

But it should be a legislative solution. It is a bad law that was made worse by the ninth circuit interpretation. If 1/10th of the pressure that is levied on Trump was put on Congress, this law would be changed already.

The fact that Democrats in Congress are now using this for political gains is incredibly distasteful. [1]

[1]http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/393069-schumer-rejects-go...

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/563084/us-border-asy...

U.S. agents have started to turn back asylum seekers at [official] ports of entry in recent weeks, leaving throngs of hopefuls at bridges all along the border.

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