South of the Border, West of the Sun
As a Hungarian, nothing could better demonstrate the brightness as well as the darkness of the United States than the annual border tour organized by the Center for Immigration Studies. The five-and-half-hour flight from D.C. to San Diego would be enough time for most Europeans to reach the heart of the Middle East or Africa – while here we just changed from the East to the West Coast of the same country.
At the bay of San Diego, not far from the former ‘Fightertown’ of Top Gun, the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, we could see almost 50 ships of the Pacific Fleet, including the 100,000-ton beasts of the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers such as USS Theodore Roosevelt and USS Abraham Lincoln. Just these two ships and their fighter forces represent more striking power than the whole currently available Chinese capacity. Therefore, it would be early to bury U.S. global power projection capability and potential.
Nevertheless, just seven miles from the gigantic carriers, another America is starting: at the Tijuana River and the Mexican city of the same name we could see the illegal migrants who just crossed the border and were stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol. Because of the water and the swamps, it was impossible to build a 30-feet tall wall across it similar to the one on the banks. So, Tijuana in certain places represents an open gate towards the United States, only protected by the Border Patrol. But who are behind these men and women to support their job? Since January 2021, the date of the inauguration of the Joe Biden administration, almost nobody.
In 2015, Europe experienced what unprotected borders meant for the continent. Misplaced solidarity and humanitarianism opened the gate for more than 1.8 million illegal arrivals just that year, with consequences still visible in certain European countries. A study published in 2020 found that only 49% of refugees who arrived to Germany starting 2013 were able to find steady employment within five years of arriving – the other 51% were assisted with the money of taxpayers. We can speak of the rise of jihadi terrorist attacks from the Paris massacre in November 2015 to the ramming in Nice in 2016, which, with the addition of dozens of other attacks committed by people with illegal immigration background, claimed the lives of hundreds of people, many of them also immigrants.
Nevertheless, the EU is not as united a union as the United States; sovereign nation states have the power to resist and shape the will of Brussels and other countries. And although it would be too early to state that a migration-sceptic approach has already won in Europe, it is no longer only Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who is demanding the proper defense of EU’s external borders. See, for instance, the joint letter of eight EU member states before the February European Council meeting demanding radical reform of the bloc’s asylum system and tougher curbs on illegal immigration, or an article by the head of the European People’s Party of the European Parliament, Manfred Weber, in which he – changing his previous opinion – argued for more protected border and less naive refugee system.
In the United States, the current trend is just the opposite of the European one, and for me it was disheartening to see that the Biden administration is repeating the mistakes made in 2015 by many capitals on the other side of the Atlantic; mainly, that they succumb exclusively to the humanitarian aspect of illegal immigration. And this, while disregarding fieldwork assessments and immigration and refugee studies that show that the most vulnerable and miserable people almost never travel thousands of miles, nor spend tens of thousands of dollars, for protection – simply because they cannot afford it. So they stay close to home.
Most illegal aliens we met in the Southwest border of the United States did not seem like they were escaping from persecution, but instead were seeking greener pastures and better living conditions. In Yuma, Ariz., at one of the gaps in the border fence we conversed with an Angolan family that had just crossed from Mexico. They told me they left their country for Brazil eight years ago, and now they crossed the border illegally to find jobs in America. They arrived with their baby who was born in Brazil, and were apprehended as a family unit (FMU in Border Patrol jargon), which significantly increased their chance of being released into the United States. CBP figures show that in February 2023 58.9% of all single adult encounters were processed for expulsion – all under the Title 42 – while only 21.7% were expelled in the case of family units. Although the process under Title 8 could also lead to deportation, considering the length of the process and declining detention capacity, the chances are more limited; a big portion of these people will stay at least several years in the United States.
We saw similar patterns in the case of a Georgian family whose story was related by Mark Krikorian: buying a round-trip from Tbilisi to Cancun with a transfer in Paris should not be the way under which a global refugee system works. According to the Article 31 of the Geneva refugee convention, “[t]he Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.” (Emphasis added.) Neither the life of the Angolan family nor the Georgian one was directly threatened in France, Brazil – or even Mexico. The Angolan family could have stayed in South America and the Georgian one could have applied for asylum in France – neither did. Instead, they chose the practice of “asylum shopping”, meaning that instead of applying for asylum in the first safe country, they sought shelter in an à la carte way in a specific country, the United States, just as consumers who are looking for the best deal in terms of humanitarian refuge. This can be understood from the perspective of the applicant, but is very far from the spirit of the refugee convention.
The fact that illegal aliens did not follow the spirit and legal framework of asylum law in Yuma was demonstrated by destroyed and discarded documents along the fence. Remains of passports, vaccination certificates, Peruvian and Columbian coins, travel documents covered the ground. In other places, remains of fire could be seen, where illegal immigrants burned their papers. This practice is well-known in the Serbian-Hungarian border, too.
Aliens are destroying their documents for one reason: to make it harder to identify them and question the credibility of their stories about persecution and fear of return. This is suspicious, because for those who have really been persecuted, documents and identification help to support their stories during legal procedures.
But illegal aliens here want to enjoy the greener pastures of the world’s leading economy and democracy. The real question is why the U.S. administration allows it. As we witnessed during the previous administration, the tools to stop the border crisis are there. None of the interviewed current or former Border Patrol agents asked for radical immigration or border security reforms. They said that they just wanted to do their job in the framework provided by the legislation of the Congress, not amid ad hoc parole decisions from the White House which, instead of the use of expedited removal, oblige CBP to transfer illegal aliens to an immigration center in a long and costly procedure. The facts are clear from the monthly report of CBP in February 2023, in which there is no mention of expulsion under Title 8. This suggests that expedited removal is limited now – if it exists at all.
Whether we are speaking of Yuma or the entire Southwest border of the United States, or even Europe, one lesson is across the board: if there are no consequences for illegal crossings, there will be no deterrence which stops people from trying it. And when states concentrate their efforts and resources on processing asylum-shoppers instead of dealing with really vulnerable refugees – who mostly stay in countries close to their homes – the system is neither fair nor humane.
