The Asylum Division of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, whose stated mission is to provide immigration, protection and humanitarian services for people who are fleeing oppression, persecution or torture, recently announced a bizarre and unjust approach to dealing with the backlog of their pending asylum applications. As of January 29th, they now process asylum applications starting with those most recently submitted, and then work their way backward: last in, first out. This cruel and unjustified procedural change punishes asylum seekers who have already been waiting in the queue for years. Take the case of Roberto (name changed for confidentiality), a gay man from Mexico. Robertos father, Juan, objected to Robertos effeminate mannerisms from the time Roberto was very little. Juan regularly beat Roberto with his fists, ropes, sticks, panswhatever he could findsaying that he was going to beat the faggot out of his son. When Roberto was about 14, Juan took him to a brujo (male witch) to make him a man. The brujo and his assistant forcibly held Roberto down and took turns raping him. They told Roberto thats how he would learn to stop being a faggot. Roberto was bullied and abused for his entire life in Mexico. He was so depressed that several times, he contemplated suicide. He came to think that being gay was a bad thing. He wanted to change and struggled to accept himself.
Finally, Roberto fled to the United States and applied for asylum here in 2015. He qualifies for asylum in the US because he was persecuted in his home country for his sexual orientation. His application is pending as he waits for the San Francisco Asylum Office to schedule his interview. Until this recent policy change, asylum seekers living in the San Francisco area could expect to wait for an interview for a little over 2 years. In Boston, the wait was almost 4 years. Asylum interviews are conducted by asylum officers, and there simply are not enough of them to keep up with the applications. There are now over 300,000 pending asylum applications in the US. While asylum seekers wait for their interviews to be scheduled, they are living here with the uncertainty of whether or not they will be able to stay. Roberto has struggled to re-build his life while living in constant fear of being sent back to a country where odds are high that he would be beaten, tortured, raped or killed, just for being gay.
The logical solution to decrease the backlog of applications is to hire more asylum officers. Faced with an inability to obtain the necessary funding to do so, the Asylum Office blames an increase in frivolous and non-meritorious asylum applications for the backlog, and justifies the new system by saying they will be able to weed out those undeserving of asylum sooner rather than later. They themselves admit that their plan is not based on hard numbers. And given the fact that the ten Asylum Offices in the US consistently cannot keep up with incoming applications, it is doubtful that the currently pending cases will ever be heard.
The new Asylum Office policy is contrary to the basic rules of fairness that we learn in kindergarten. Simply put, you cant have a rule that allows every new person to cut to the front of the line. And applying this policy to some of the most vulnerable members of our community is cruel and inhumane. Until this new policy was announced, Roberto thought the wait for his interview was almost over. He could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now that light has gone dark.
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