Trump administration urges global leaders to restrict asylum system
The second-highest-ranking U.S. diplomat called for changes to international refugee and asylum policies and accused most asylum seekers of being "fake" during remarks on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday.
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau's comments came as he pitched countries to change their policies to align with the U.S., doubling down on President Donald Trump's administration's clampdown on immigration.
"If you have hundreds of thousands of fake asylum seekers, what happens to the real asylum seekers?" Landau said during opening remarks at a panel discussing asylum and migration reform alongside representatives from Kosovo, Bangladesh, Panama and Liberia.
The officials on the panel voiced support for reforms of the existing asylum system.
"I think it is going to be one of the defining topics of the 21st Century, whether we like it or not," Landau said. "I think we have to be realistic that these laws are now being abused. And we just have to acknowledge that. I think the first step in dealing with any pathology is to acknowledge you have a problem."
The Trump administration has long claimed that no one has a right to seek asylum in the United States; nor is it a right to immigrate to the U.S., to receive an immigration trial or refugee status in the country of an individual's choice, officials have said.
During his address at the U.N. General Assembly earlier this week, Trump said countries "are going to hell" because of their asylum policies.
"Sometimes we see people who leave one country and traverse maybe a dozen countries to get to another country, right?" Landau said. "That makes it look like this is no longer trying to avoid imminent injury or death, and it makes it look like it's just a substitute for migration."
Landau spoke to a room full of diplomats and foreign dignitaries, urging them to embrace "sovereignty" and to embrace asylum as a temporary status, and said that migrants should be encouraged to return home as soon as they can.
"We get to decide who comes in and under what circumstances and how long," Landau said. "That is the quintessential element of sovereignty."
"Saying the process is susceptible to abuse is not xenophobic; it is not being a mean or bad person," he said. "For us, these are kind of common-sense principles, and I think are valuable to prevent the people who are asylum seekers from being subject to abuse, and for somebody from abusing the system."
He pointedly called out international aid organizations and NGOs for allegedly "promoting" mass migration.
"I think we have perceived that there is a whole network of NGOs and multilateral institutions that are really promoting people to be migrating, to be giving them a script. And if you say this, then you're going to be entitled to an asylum hearing," he said, adding that he was not "accusing anybody of anything."
Earlier this year, the Trump administration prioritized the expedited resettlement of white South African refugees in the U.S., even as it has turned away refugees from countries including Afghanistan and Haiti under an executive order signed by Trump in February.
Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, urged Landau to work with the U.N. to find solutions to "preserve asylum."
"Asylum is a very ancient concept. It is not something we have invented in the past 80 years," Grandi said during the event, which he attended as an audience member. Though he acknowledged that "asylum is not a license to move."
