Matthew – When you agree with me, I know I am on the right track! Happy new year, Jason

I don’t like the idea of designating certain countries as dangerous and automatically granting asylum to their nationals. As you mention, Congress would never create such a law, though probably it could be done administratively (like TPS). The problem is that this leaves many countries out, and if we deem Cuba to be dangerous, that is setting a pretty low bar. Almost any dictatorship on earth is as dangerous as Cuba. So then we’d have a situation where almost anyone from a non-democratic country could automatically receive asylum. This would create incentives for such people to come to the U.S., but it would also create an incentive for U.S. embassies to stop issuing visas. Also, for me, I believe in a humanitarian asylum policy that is a-political (though of course that was not the original intent back in the day – international asylum law is arguably all about fighting Communism). The CAA exists because of political considerations. For this reason, I think it perverts our humanitarian asylum law and it is another reason I oppose it.

If we want to make things “fairer,” why not use the political effort and capital it would take to repeal the CAA to expand it instead, offering similar rights to North Koreans, Somalis, Sudanese, and Syrians, rather than yanking it away from Cubans? That would be just as fair – and it would lighten, not increase, the load on the asylum system. Obviously, this will never happen with the current Congress, but let’s bide our time, and in the meantime, let’s not do asylum seekers the “favor” of making them wait in line with the Cubans.