Here’s How The Asylum System Is Being Exploited

Tens of thousands of apprehended migrants from the Central American countries driving the border crisis exploit loopholes in the immigration system by making false asylum claims, according to data, experts and surveys.

The loopholes allow “people with suspect asylum claims … to make their way into the interior of the United States and disappear,” one expert told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Data shows only about half of the migrants from those countries who claim asylum actually file a formal application after being let into the U.S.

Asylum is a status reserved for individuals who face persecution in their homeland, but less than 4% of migrants from the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras exclusively said they were fleeing violence, while 72% cited economic conditions as their sole reason for leaving, according to a 2017 survey of deported migrants by the Migration in the Southern Border of Mexico (EMIF).

Just 10% cited both violence and economic conditions as motivating factors.

“The vast majority of current Central American asylum seekers — by their own admission — are economic migrants who do not qualify for asylum, because they are not subject to persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group,” Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) research director Matt O’Brien told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Combined primary and secondary reasons Northern Triangle migrants say they emigrate to the U.S., according to migrants surveyed following their deportation. 

(Graphic: DCNF/Andrew Kerr; Data source: Survey on Migration in the Southern Border of Mexico)

But flaws in U.S. immigration procedures provide economically driven migrants with an illegitimate pathway into the country through asylum, Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) analyst Matthew Susses told TheDCNF.

“These factors combine to make a situation that’s easily exploitable and puts people with real legitimate asylum claims and credible fears of violence at a disadvantage because of the large numbers of bogus asylum claims in the system,” he said.

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