I’m not saying this is the best of all possible plans for dealing with the wave of people coming to the US but at least one part of it makes sense. As the LA Times reports today, the number of people eligible to file asylum claims has dropped substantially.

Under the new rules, people who cross through a third country on the way to the U.S. and fail to seek protections there are presumed ineligible for asylum. Only people who enter the U.S. without authorization are subject to this new restriction.

The number of single-adult migrants who are able to pass initial screenings at the border has dropped from 83% to 46% under the new policy, the Biden administration said in the court filing. The 83% rate refers to initial asylum screenings between 2014 and 2019; the new data cover the period from May 12, the first full day the new policy was in place, through June 13.

Since the expiration of Title 42 rules that allowed border agents to quickly turn back migrants at the border without offering them access to asylum, the administration has pointed to a drop in border crossings as proof that its policies are working.

Again, I’m not saying this is an ideal system but what we had for most of the last two years was a disaster. We had literally millions of people showing up at the border, crossing illegally and then turning themselves in to claim asylum. They did this knowing that the US response in most cases would be to give them a chance to prove their claims before a judge. Thanks to a massive backlog of cases, that court date would be, on average, seven years from whenever they crossed. And in the meantime they would be allowed to settle down in the country and make a new life, which is actually what they wanted. Most of the people who file those claims would eventually be denied because economic migration is not a legitimate ground for such a claim, but by that point they’ve been here for years, maybe had kids. They won’t be leaving no matter what the immigration judge says.

Under the new system, the Biden administration has added one change to the initial “credible fear” interviews which are the first step toward the asylum claim gravy train. Did you apply for asylum anywhere between your country of origin and here? If the answer is no, then they aren’t really asylum seekers, they’re economic migrants looking for a new life in America.

Naturally, all the usual suspects are against the new rule and are doing their best to undermine it.

…immigrant advocates and legal groups have blasted Biden’s new asylum policy, arguing that it is a repurposed version of a Trump-era effort that made people in similar circumstances ineligible for asylum. (Under Biden’s policy, certain migrants can overcome the presumption that they are ineligible for asylum.) The ACLU and other groups have sought to block the rule in federal court in San Francisco, in front of the same judge who stopped the Trump policy years ago.

The activist class may be worked up but this isn’t the Trump administration. These problems simply won’t get the same kind of attention from the press when the person to blame is Biden. After all, Biden is running for president and the media is going to do its best to keep the border off the front pages for the next year.

Coincidentally, activists have been trying to overturn a similar law in Canada, one which essentially says migrants can’t claim asylum in Canada unless they made an asylum claim in the country where they first arrived, i.e. the US or whatever country in Europe or Asia they flew in from. Last week Canada’s top court ruled that law did not violate the rights of migrants.

Canada’s top court has ruled that an agreement with the United States aiming to control the flow of refugees across the shared border is constitutional, ending a lengthy legal challenge by advocacy groups who argue the deal violates the rights of asylum seekers.

In a unanimous judgment released on Friday morning, the supreme court found the controversial Safe Third Country Agreement did not infringe refugee claimants’ rights to liberty and security of the person…

In recent years, tens of thousands of migrants have circumvented the agreement and claimed asylum at unofficial points along the 5,500-mile US-Canada border. In January, Royal Canadian Mounted Police intercepted more than 5,000 asylum seekers along the road, the highest since the government started tracking the increase that began in 2017, following the election of Donald Trump as US president.

But in March, the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and President Joe Biden announced a change to the agreement, applying the rules to the entire border and permitting officials to turn back migrants attempting to cross at unofficial border points.

So the Biden administration is basically allowing Canada to treat migrants along the northern border the same way we’re treating migrants along the southern border. You have a right to claim asylum but not to game the system for all its worth. That part makes sense.

Of course that’s just the stick part of the Biden plan. The carrot part of the plan is that the administration is now accepting at least 40,000 asylum seekers a month through a sign up process:

Starting in June, officials will allow more migrants waiting in Mexico to secure an appointment to enter the U.S. through a government phone app known as CBP One, which the Biden administration has transformed into the main gateway to the American asylum system.

U.S. border officials are preparing to distribute 1,250 appointments each day — or roughly 38,750 each month — to migrants in Mexico so they can present themselves at ports of entry for an opportunity to be allowed inside the country to request asylum, DHS officials said.

Granted that’s still a huge number of people but it’s also a tiny fraction of the 10,000+ migrants a day we were dealing with a little over a month ago. Also, this system potentially gives people a reason to wait for a legal appointment rather than just trying to sneak across the border.

Border encounters were still over 200,000 in May which is awful historically. The real test will be the June numbers which are still 20+ days away. At that point we’ll have a better idea if this plan is really working or not.