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This is a podcast interview with Rev. Craig B. Mousin founder and former Executive Director of the Midwest Immigrant Rights Center and an Adjunct Faculty member at DePaul University’s College of Law and The Grace School of Applied Diplomacy. He talks about responding to the federal government’s proposed regulations entitled “Procedures for Asylum and Withholding of Removal; Credible Fear and Reasonable Fear Review.”
We encourage you to file your own comments opposing part or all of the proposed procedures and asking the government to withdraw the entire proposed rule. To assist you in obtaining a link to the proposed procedures or in filing your comment, you may incorporate your remarks into one of the templates provided by the following:
The National Immigrant Justice Center offers this template for any community member concerned about access to asylum:
If you are concerned about unaccompanied minors or children refugee issues, you might find the template of the Young Center helpful:
Both websites provide additional information on how the proposed regulations restrict access to the courts and prevent bona fide applicants from presenting their cases for asylum. Please make sure your comments are filed on or before 11:59 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, July 15, 2020.
Please share this podcast and links with members of your community or faith organizations, family members and friends. Encourage them to file comments to help ensure that our nation continues to offer shelter for refugees in need. Thank you for your consideration of this request.
If you would like more information about the documentary, “Brightness of Noon, the Intersect of Faith, Refugees and Immigrants, Part II,”
I oppose the entire proposed rule that would further limit immigration for persons suffering from persecution in their native country. We should welcome all who are at risk.
Thank you for your podcast as I found it educational in so many topics . Areas that I was unaware.
Thank you
I oppose any restrictions that would take protection from Immigrants that are facing persecution and danger from the countries they have come from. Humane and Just Governments welcome not deny.
wendy carson
America has long been a destination for immigrants denied basic human rights, including the right to live a decent life as well as U.S. Constitutional rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There is no reason, not even a change in the leadership style of our head of state, to change this. The image of human beings, many of them very young children, living in cages at out borders is repugnant beyond words. Asylum is something to which any potential immigrant should be able to aspire.
Thanks, Craig, for bringing this horrible, orchestrated movement by the Trump Administration to effectively end asylum for those most in need to my attention AND provide me and others with action steps to take.
I have shared with people, and hope they do the same.
Until the U S immigration system is totally revised and illegal immigration is stopped I can’t in good conscience advocate for asylum. I do believe we should always allow legitimate asylum petitions but first our broken immigration system must be fixed.
Very important work Craig!
The Proposed Rule raises the standard of proof from a “significant possibility” to a “reasonable possiblility” that the alien would be persecuted or tortured in the country of removal. In short, this means that it is no longer sufficient that an alien has well-founded fear but has to prove that persecution or torture has happened or will happen. This higher standard is almost the same as requiring that you have written evidence that you are or will be persecuted or tortured. This higher standard is in violation with the Refugee Treaty and its Protocol of 1967, of which the USA is a signatory, and which states explicitly that a well-foudned fear is enough to meet the definition of a refugee.
One could have a discussion on the precise wording of the Treaty and Protocol and how these differ from the Proposed Rule. However, I think it is simply more convincing to observe that this restrictive change of the American rules on international protection are by definition a restriction of the concept of a refugee. This means that the USA does no longer fulfils its duty to incorporate the 1967 Protocol into US immigration Law. Or, in other words, the USA has practically withdrawn itself from its legal obligations to offer protection to refugees as the adjusted meaning in the Proposed Rule creates a new category of refugees who have written evidence. And as history has shown, a person with well-founded fear of persecution seldom has a written note from his or her persecutor.
If the USA will change its rules as proposed, it will not only deny protection to most if not all refugees, but also deny the roots of this nation, which George Washington, one of the founding fathers who escaped from Europe, so eloquently formulated: “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions”.
The Proposed Rule ignores this part of American history.
Important work. Am sending my opinion today. But also my church sent it to all members and asked that they respond as well!