California Congressman Says Mexico Should ‘Obey International Law’
American regulations require political asylum applicants to seek refuge in the first safe country they reach, Issa pointed out
by Brendan Kirby | Updated 01 May 2018 at 12:48 PM
Mexico is the key to solving the migrant crisis at the Southwest border, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Tuesday.
Issa, who represents San Diego County, just across the border from where a large migrant caravan is trying to cross into America to claim asylum, praised President Donald Trump for applying pressure to Mexico.
“He’s pushing Mexico to obey international law,” he said. “Under international law, the asylum is in the first place you go to, not the place you want to go to.”
Issa also backed the decision by the Trump administration to pursue criminal charges against migrants who violate the law. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Monday that 11 people associated with the caravan have been charged with illegal entry after U.S. Border Patrol officers found them several miles beyond the boundary.
“The president is now attempting to enforce our relatively weak laws,” Issa said. “One of the most important parts he’s doing that’s having an effect is he’s charging people if they break the law in this process.”
Mexico at one point broke up the highly publicized caravan, which began its journey in Central America. But about 150 people continued the trek toward America.
Asylum claims by border crossers in the United States have spiked over the last decade. But Issa said the vast majority are not valid claims.
“Huge chunks of people who claim asylum later are found to have outright been coached to do that, purely for economic reasons … We have put in laws that make it so easy to tell, essentially, a lie and get in the United States and then be here for years, or perhaps forever,” he said. “It has to change. Congress has to step up to the plate.”
Issa urged Mexico to apply the same scrutiny to U.S.-bound migrants as it does foreigners who try to claim asylum there. He said he saw that firsthand during the 2014 surge of unaccompanied youths who came from Central America.
The teenagers who tried to claim asylum in Mexico got nowhere fast, Issa said.
“Mexico, if they tried to stay there, was deporting them very quickly … They were very aggressive,” he said. “The buses came back very quickly. We need that same level of cooperation from Mexico.”
Once foreigners make it across the U.S. border, Issa said, “sanctuary” laws and other policies in California make it far less likely they ever will have to return home.”
“The politics of this state have become the politics of illegal immigration,” he said.
A better policy, Issa argued, is a robust guest-worker program for agricultural laborers.
“The reality is a guest-worker program that brings a worker for a time and then keeps them attached to their community is a win for the farmers in California and Arizona, and it’s a win for America, and it’s a win for those countries,” he said.
“We simply have to have the will to realize that helping those countries is not always simply chain-migrating the best and the brightest from there.”
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