Nobody could argue that there is a lack of coverage of the Trump Administration – except that when it comes to some of the more important aspects … there is.
The news media is naturally obsessed with the daily clown show: The President’s bizarre tweets and outrageous statements: The perpetual investigations, the oafish toady of an attorney general, the payoffs to various mistresses, etc. etc.
Fantastic stuff, especially when you remember all those boring years when we had Presidents who were adults. But what we aren’t covering very much are the termites eating away at the vital organs of our system of democracy. Positions on the Consumer Product Safety Commission, for example, are being filled with people who would approve chewable flavored asbestos, if anyone thought someone could make significant profit selling it.
But beyond that, things are happening that are quietly assaulting the very meaning of what it is to be an American. One the most sacred of these always has been the right to asylum.
We’ve always been a nation of refugees from various forms of persecution – religious, political, whatever. The Pilgrims did not, after all, come here for easy lives. As a result, ever since we’ve been a nation, the United States has recognized a right to asylum for anyone persecuted on the grounds of race, religion, nationality, political beliefs or their ethnic or social group.
All anyone has to do is prove that they have a well-grounded fear of persecution in their home country. For years, Freedom House, an organization in Detroit, has helped hundreds of asylum seekers from all over the world win asylum and start new lives.
That, however, doesn’t sit well with Trump, or his key immigration advisor Stephen Miller, about whom the less said the better. Earlier this week, while the media was preoccupied with whether William Barr was going to show up before Congress, Trump, who seems to be especially biased against Mexicans, ordered new restrictions on asylum seekers at our southern border. Those would include charging fees just for applying for asylum, and also making it harder for those seeking asylum to get work permits. Naturally, he said it was being done to “safeguard our system against rampant abuse of our asylum process.”
There has been no abuse of the process, however, except the abuse Trump is now trying to get away with. There are already almost a million cases backed up in immigration courts.
Asylum law, by the way, is supposed to be determined by Congress, not the President. Not that Trump has ever been one to care much about the separation of powers.
I asked Elizabeth Vasquez, Freedom House’s chief operating office, what she thought about what Trump wanted to do to the asylum process. She wasn’t happy, to put it mildly.
“Creating unnecessary obstacles to individuals who are claiming their basic human rights goes against our values as a nation and our obligations under international law,” she said.
She added that many, if not most of these asylum seekers “are future U.S. citizens who should be given the opportunity to begin building their lives in the United States and contributing economically to our communities.”
She’s right, of course. I wonder whether Donald Trump would have wanted to grant asylum to an old teacher who turned up in the 1930s, a member of an unpopular ethnic group who was despised and hated in his native country, and came here because he no longer felt safe.
We did give him asylum; his name, by the way, was Albert Einstein, and he’s why we got the atomic bomb and the Nazis didn’t. I wonder if the President knows.
