from the only-white-people-deemed-to-do-it-the-right-way dept
Many Trump supporters keep insisting that his immigration purges are justified because the people swept up in them came here “illegally,” so who cares if they get kicked out (or shipped off to some random war-torn country). When asked what people seeking asylum should do, the answer is often “do it the legal way.” That the US government has spent years making “the legal way” harder and harder — and, as we’re about to see, has now started punishing the people who actually took it — never seems to enter the conversation. But here we have a really clear example of people doing it “the legal way, as instructed by Trump himself” who are about to get kicked out of the US.
The AP is reporting that the administration is about to pull out on the order of 200,000 visas from those who came to the US legally under B1 or B2 visas, and then sought asylum, just as Trump said they should. This would be the largest mass revocation of visas in US history.
The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who have applied for or are currently seeking asylum status in the United States. If it happens, the move would be the largest single mass revocation of visas in U.S. history and would likely face legal challenges.
Unless challenged or revised, the State Department is expected to announce in the coming weeks the revocation of so-called B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026 whose holders have sought asylum or are now seeking asylum, according to State Department documents obtained by The Associated Press and two U.S. officials. The action will be taken in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security.
“We are coordinating with DHS to identify and revoke the nonimmigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the United States claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently,” said State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott.
Go back to 2018, when the first Trump administration proclaimed that anyone crossing the southern border anywhere other than an official port of entry would be ineligible for asylum. The whole framing was that there was a legal way to seek asylum and an illegal way, and only the legal way was going to count. In remarks about this executive order, Trump said that those who wished to seek asylum would have to “lawfully present themselves at a port of entry,” at which point they could seek asylum.
Under this plan, the illegal aliens will no longer get a free pass into our country by lodging meritless claims in seeking asylum. Instead, migrants seeking asylum will have to present themselves lawfully at a port of entry. So they’re going to have to lawfully present themselves at a port of entry.
A few months later, in his State of the Union, he claimed he wanted immigrants to enter the country legally (in large numbers!):
“I want people to come into our country in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally,” he declared…
Note that these are two separate demands: show up at a port of entry rather than sneaking across, and get into the country through legal channels in the first place. The people about to lose their visas satisfied both, and then some. They applied for a visa, got vetted and approved by the State Department, walked in through the front door, and filed an asylum claim through the official process. If there’s a more “legal way” available, nobody has described it.
That demand, that people come “legally” and then make their asylum claims at a port of entry (though the courts later deemed this “asylum only counts at port of entry” to be wildly against the law) still resulted in a ton of people getting legal visas to the US, and then seeking asylum when they entered.
It now appears that (unsurprisingly) the Trump administration was full of shit when they claimed they wanted asylum seekers to “come the legal way.”
There was nothing in what Trump said initially that said they had to get other types of visas to seek asylum. It just said “get here legally and then make your case.” Which is exactly what all of these people did, and Trump and Marco Rubio are about to pull their visas, even though they literally did things “the legal way” that Trump himself had encouraged.
While this won’t necessarily mean immediate deportations, it will likely mean that people with live, pending asylum claims lose their lawful status while those claims are still being adjudicated — which is precisely how you end up removable. And with bands of roving ICE thugs looking for anyone without legal status to deport, you know these people are likely to be added to the target list.
So once again, doing things “the legal way” turns out to protect you from exactly nothing. Follow the instructions the president himself gave you and on the visa the State Department itself issued you, file the paperwork the process demands, and the reward is having that visa pulled while your claim is still pending. What good is doing things “the legal way” when, with the stroke of a pen, Trump and Rubio will make that “legal way” illegal?
The New Colossus poem on the Statue of Liberty reads:
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…
To which the Trump administration responds: “get the fuck out of here.”
Filed Under: asylum, deportation, donald trump, immigration, marco rubio, trump administratin, visa revocation, visas
Comments on “Trump Told Asylum Seekers To Do It “The Legal Way.” Now He’s Revoking 200,000 Of Their Visas.”
Remember, the prevailing sentiment amongst Trumpists is “they all gotta go” (and by “they”, Trumpists mean “people with skin colors on the lower half of the Family Guy Race Chart”). Whether “they” came here legally doesn’t matter to Trumpists. Neither does the effect all those immigrants being deported will have on the American economy.
Not at all. Having a paper trail makes it so much easier to kick them out.
“I don’t have a problem with legal immigration” is what racists say because they know how unpopular their actual beliefs are.
It’s a variation on Lee Atwater’s comment about how they say “tax cuts” because they can’t get away with saying the N-word anymore. It’s still racism, but they sprinkle plausible deniability on top and make it socially acceptable.
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And then they celebrate moves like this and let the glamour fall anyway, because this was always going to be what they wanted when they finished with the undocumented immigrants.
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Another “first they came for” scenario. They always ratchet it up. There’s always another victim in line. They are inherently hierarchical and they cannot feel on top unless someone is beneath them. And it will be the person standing next to them at the Trump rally if everyone else is disappeared.
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Dolly Parton’s family announced today that she had died. While a great many people are publicly mourning her death and celebrating her musical legacy, they are also pointing out how good of a person she was: a supporter of LGBTQ rights, a champion for helping people out of poverty, and an advocate for childhood literacy.
She was the exact kind of person Trumpists would line up against the wall when they eventually need a new enemy.
Fascism always requires an enemy, an “other”, a force which must always be met with greater force to cement a fascist’s control. Once the obvious scapegoats are out of the way—immigrants, religious “others”, queer people—they will turn toward allies to those groups and other political dissenters. Dolly Parton is a better example of true strength than Donald Trump, for she always tried to lift people up and help others who needed it even when she could’ve ignored those in need due to her wealth and fame. When the fascists inevitably try to tell us that she must be demonized instead of canonized, you will know how truly desperate they have become.
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Of course “immigration enforcement” is about racism. It’s always been about racism. And anybody who tries to tell you it’s not about racism is stupid, lying, or both.
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It basically worked for the concept of citizenship. For those from a “good” bloodline, it’s a right; for everyone else, it’s a privilege for which they’ll need to jump through arbitrary hoops. It’s pretty much the same in all countries, and countries are often shaped and created to keep some purported ethnic group together (and keep them apart from the nearly-identical people across the border).
“Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor, I’ll piss on ’em
That’s what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses, let’s club ’em to death
Get it over with and just dump ’em on the boulevard”
— Lou Reed, “Dirty Blvd”, from “New York”, 1989
I don’t see you libs complaining when Obama or Biden deported more people tha Trump.
None of this would be happening if Biden passed an immigration law instead of opening up the border.
Those “visas” are illegal, because Trump revoked them. He is the law.
It’s almost like him and his allies and supporters are racist child fuckers than want to go back to when they could hang the slave and fuck their wife and kids.
I wish there were good options on the ballot more often.
Now? This surely is another egregious injustice, but it is in addition to behaviors exhibited from the get. They have always been arresting and deporting peole here perfectly legally.
I thought it was quite obvious decades ago that a “Trump deal” means he will most assuredly renegade on it unless it is something he personally benefits from in some way or something he can use to polish his miniscule ego.
Just look at the hundreds of legal cases littering his real estate businesses were he cheated contractors and others, if someone is still surprised that he operates the presidential office and his administration in the same way – get your head examined.