There’s a distinction here between asylum and other types of migration because, while some MAGA hard-liners have railed against even the so-called high-skill, work-based immigration system, both Democrats and the Chamber of Commerce–friendly Republican establishment remains at least putatively in favor of the overarching credo of legal immigration, whether that’s seasonal agricultural visas or the much-discussed H-1B specialized worker program. While it may seem superficially at odds with increasing animosity to the realities of asylum processing, it’s perfectly self-consistent if you parse out the key place where these programs differ.
That employment visas tie workers to employers in ways that restrict their movement within the economy and put them on precarious footing no matter how closely they try to comply with their requirements is tacitly seen as more of a feature than a bug. Like the refugee program, which is capped annually by the president and features lengthy and redundant security checks and application materials, what’s so appealing about these statuses is they promise and enforce a measure of control, both pre- and post-arrival in the U.S. It’s heavily managed migration, and for that idea to exist, so must the flip side of fortifying against unmanaged migration.
The asylum system, by intent and design, does not gel with this approach at all. The law itself requires people already to be on U.S. soil or at ports of entry to apply, puts them through an intentionally lenient credible fear interview—meant to weed out only clearly ineligible claims—and then gives them a chance to plead their case while living and working in the U.S. Sure, it wasn’t designed with anywhere near this volume of applications, but the principle that people would get to just show up and request protections, and that they’d be sheltered by the U.S. while these requests were evaluated, is not an accident nor an unexpected eventuality, no matter how often it’s discussed as some sort of loophole.