{"id":165475,"date":"2020-07-27T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T11:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=165475"},"modified":"2020-07-23T04:45:36","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T03:45:36","slug":"asylum-now-an-american-horror-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/07\/asylum-now-an-american-horror-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Asylum, Now an American Horror Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

22 Jul 2020 – <\/em>It\u2019s hard to know exactly where the Trump Administration found the inspiration for its\u00a0newest set<\/a>\u00a0of draconian asylum rules. Might it have been a National Geographic special where a giant anaconda encircles its prey, squeezes it to death, and then swallows it whole? Or perhaps a late-night, B-grade horror film in which some evil mastermind drowns his victims by slowly filling a sealed room with water? Regardless, these proposed changes cannot camouflage the racism, xenophobia, and nativist politics behind them. We\u2019ve seen the Muslim travel ban, the attempted rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and the terrorizing of communities by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Now we\u2019re witnessing an assault designed to suffocate the hopes and life prospects of asylum seekers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Asylum-seekers and economic migrants take to the seas, waiting out the dangerous journey in the boat\u2019s cramped cargo space.
Photo: UNHCR\/A. D\u2019Amato<\/p><\/div>\n

The changes under consideration would upend the decades-old and internationally embraced standards of the\u00a0Refugee Act<\/a>\u00a0of 1980, created to protect refugees who have a\u00a0\u201cwell-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.\u201d Despite the frequent misleading and malicious characterizations from the White House, with rare exceptions asylum seekers leave their homes with few resources other than the keen determination to endure the risks, hurdles, and hardships they inevitably face in reaching and living in the United States. But their motivation is simple: failing to do so is quite possibly the prelude to grievous harm and even death in their country of origin.<\/p>\n

Consider several representative cases: a Cameroonian man tortured for exposing government corruption; a Guatemalan woman repeatedly beaten and raped by her gang member husband; a gay man from Afghanistan at risk of execution for his sexual orientation; a political dissident who fled detention in Eritrea; or a Mexican family whose sons are being recruited by the drug cartels. Sadly, these accounts are not unusual. But escaping such dire circumstances will become exceedingly difficult if the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security move forward with plans to adopt a much narrower definition of who\u2019s eligible for asylum in the U.S. Moreover, with these proposed rule changes every asylum seeker not thoroughly versed in our immigration laws will face increasingly insurmountable odds when it comes to meeting the revised and deliberately impenetrable application and screening requirements.<\/p>\n

Ever since the election four years ago, Trump Administration officials have worked overtime to undermine the longstanding view of the United States as, in John F. Kennedy\u2019s words, a \u201cnation of immigrants.\u201d Much of that effort has involved portraying those seeking entry into this country\u2014including asylum applicants fleeing persecution\u2014in starkly negative terms meant to discourage our compassion toward them. With manipulative\u00a0psychological appeals<\/a>\u00a0contrived to confuse and divide us, we\u2019ve been told that immigration imperils our security; that wall-building, cages, and other punitive measures are all ways to fight injustice; that men, women, and children who want to enter the U.S. are devious and different; that cracking down on immigration is a necessary step in the pursuit of national greatness; and that unless we block entry we\u2019ll lose control over our country\u2019s future. Such claims are readily debunked, but their skillful packaging regrettably draws adherents nonetheless.<\/p>\n

During the recently concluded\u00a0public comment<\/a>\u00a0period for these proposed new rules on asylum, tens of thousands of comments were submitted by concerned citizens,\u00a0human rights organizations<\/a>,\u00a0former immigration judges<\/a>,\u00a0faith-based groups<\/a>,\u00a0medical humanitarian organizations<\/a>,\u00a0legal rights groups<\/a>, and others. From a diversity of backgrounds, they offer a unifying message: immigrants strengthen our communities and we must never become numb to the pain and suffering of others. At the same time, we\u2019re also reminded that the real Boogeyman\u2014heartless and eager to destroy what\u2019s best about America\u2014isn\u2019t lurking at our border. He\u2019s sitting in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Roy Eidelson is a member of the TRANSCEND Network<\/a> and was a member of the American Psychological Association for over 25 years, prior to his resignation. He is a clinical psychologist and the president of Eidelson Consulting<\/a>, where he studies, writes about, and consults on the role of psychological issues in political, organizational, and group conflict settings. He is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility<\/a>, former executive director of the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, and a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology<\/a>. Roy is the author of <\/em>Political Mind Games: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What\u2019s Happening, What\u2019s Right, and What\u2019s Possible<\/a> and can be reached at reidelson@eidelsonconsulting.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re witnessing an assault designed to suffocate the hopes and life prospects of asylum seekers. The changes under consideration would upend the decades-old and internationally embraced standards of the Refugee Act of 1980, created to protect refugees who have a \u201cwell-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.\u201d the real Boogeyman isn\u2019t lurking at our border. He\u2019s sitting in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":85121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[2061,1495,487,1496,926,883,821],"class_list":["post-165475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-asylum-seekers","tag-human-needs","tag-human-rights","tag-humanism","tag-humanitarianism","tag-migrants","tag-refugees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}