Migration | The USA will loosen border controls on Thursday – up to 150,000 new arrivals are already waiting at the border

Washington

Last the years on the southern border of the United States have been record-breaking. Despite that, the number of asylum seekers arriving in the United States from Mexico will increase even more from the end of the week.

The reason is the change in US border policy.

Late Thursday night border states time (Friday morning Finnish time) the United States will stop applying the section of the law known as Article 42, which has enabled the quick conversion of many aspirants under the guise of curbing the coronavirus pandemic.

So what things will change in border control? HS was looking for answers to the most important questions.

What is section 42?

Section 42 can be found in the US Public Health Act, and the procedure based on it at the border has been in force for more than three years. It was introduced by the president Donald Trump’s season in March 2020 based on pandemic protection. About three million people have been converted under the law. Newspaper The New York Times by this corresponds to about a third of the aspirants.

The procedure freed border officials from their usual obligation to receive and process asylum applications from people from Mexico and Central America. In the opinion of critics, even at the beginning, it was more about cynically blocking the border and reducing the workload of the overburdened immigration authorities than protecting against the corona virus, which in any case was spreading in the United States.

Legal prevented of the current president, a Democrat Joe Biden administration to abandon the procedure last year. On the other hand, the Biden administration – as obviously cynical as Trump’s – expanded the procedure to include new groups of people such as Venezuelans, whose numbers at the border multiplied many times last year.

Read more: Biden has adopted a method criticized by Trump – The father of three children got to the United States at the last minute

Why is the procedure abandoned?

The procedure nature was temporary from the beginning. It has been clear to abandon it since the Biden administration declared the end of the national state of emergency caused by the pandemic in April.

This is taking the United States into the great unknown: The number of arrivals at the southern border is significantly higher than before the start of the pandemic, but now the authorities are mainly returning to the old ways of controlling the population.

What changes at the border?

From Thursday night from now on, the border authorities must accept the asylum applications of border crossers. Processing them takes time and threatens to overcrowd reception centers and overburden asylum authorities. This can probably be seen as an influx of newcomers onto the streets of border towns to an even greater extent than at present. When newcomers cannot be held in reception centers, their supervision becomes more difficult.

Those whose applications are rejected are barred from trying again for many years. At the time of the temporary special procedure, people could try again and again without it changing their status in the eyes of the authorities.

What is happening in the border region now?

Sources The US administration estimated for the news channel CNN that there are 150,000 people near the border in Mexico waiting for conversion practices to change.

For example, people had gathered in the Mexican border city of Tijuana since the beginning of the week to ensure their place in the front row.

“Nothing like this has been seen before,” Tijuana immigration attorney Enrique Lucero said the Reuters news agency.

The U.S. border city of El Paso alone is expecting 12,000 to 15,000 new arrivals, based on a recent survey by city officials on the Mexican side of Ciudad Juárez, the mayor said Oscar Leeser for news agency AFP.

El Paso, as well as the Texas cities Brownsville and Laredo, located on the border, have already declared a state of emergency, because there have been so many arrivals that there are not enough places to stay for everyone, and a large number are spending the night on the streets.

What does this mean for Biden?

They will come weeks and months at the border will probably increase tensions in US politics.

Republicans have already described Democrat Biden’s border policy as a chaotic mess, and the growing number of newcomers will easily play into the Republicans’ pocket on the way to next year’s presidential election.

Republicans have presented predictions of up to a million aspirants in three months. Republican governor of Texas Greg Abbott claimed that Biden “welcomes people from all over the world.”

Of course, Biden has tried to prepare for the future. He has ordered 1,500 more soldiers to the border. In addition, the opportunities for unauthorized border crossers to obtain asylum is made difficult.

Asylum seekers are advised to arrive through official border crossings and book an appointment for an asylum interview using the mobile app – which users have criticized as painfully faulty.

“The border is not open, it has not been open and it will not be open from May 11 either”, the minister responsible for domestic security Alejandro Mayorkas your bet to immigrants last week, according to CNN.

“You are being misled. You are risking your life and your savings without the desired consequences on our southern border.”