Land Of The Fee
Image: Aaditi Lele
First, the barbed wire fence. Then, the $50 fee. Vilifying asylum seekers, cherry-picking migrants, and putting up walls don’t seem to be passing interests of the Trump administration. And their latest slew of malevolent policy proposals is more than a stone’s throw from “give us your huddled masses.” This time, the wall isn’t going to be made up of bricks and barbed wire. It’s made up of dollar bills out of the pockets of those who come knocking with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Under the false guise of raising revenue to tackle mounting debts, the USCIS has proposed capitalizing off of the desperation of immigrants. The proposal mandates a citizenship fee increase from $725 to $1,170, a 60 percent rise, DACA renewal fee increase from $495 to $725, and worst of all, a $50 application fee for asylum seekers in combination with a $490 work permit fee. Now, I’m no expert, but the definition of an asylum seeker is someone who is seeking protection against persecution in their own country. So, what sense does it make to charge a $50 fee just for the chance to prove they have a well-founded fear? Well, none at all. To be clear, the Trump Administration isn’t trying to make up for any debts here; they’re simply trying to cherry-pick their immigrants by putting up more barriers for the ones who need it most. After all, it's become the land of the fee anyway.
First of all, the administration's claim that the changes are intended to raise revenue is a false pretext under which they are enstating discriminatory policy. “The cost to collect the fee will probably outweigh the fee itself and doesn’t come close to covering the cost of adjudicating an asylum application,” one USCIS official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, told Buzzfeed News. Since the fee is just a small drop in the bucket to cover the costs the Department incurs, it’s not doing very much at all towards raising a significant amount of revenue. So, why do it? To make seeking asylum harder. Adding fiscal barriers to make the process more arduous is how the administration is making asylum virtually impossible to obtain in America. And that’s why so few countries in the world have opted to do so. If the rule was to be set in place, the US would join Fiji, Australia, and Iran to become only the 4th country to ever place a monetary barrier to an asylum application. Looking ahead, the fee would serve as an impediment to many applicants, reducing the number of applications and possibly approval rates as well.
However, approval rates are already low. According to the National Immigration Forum and USCIS data, in 2016, roughly 28 percent of 73,081 cases were approved, leaving more than two-thirds of applicants denied. With a current denial rate around 60-70 percent, denial rates were as low as 44.5 percent only five years ago. So, when over two-thirds of applicants are denied refugee status, many would-be paying the $50 application fee just to be denied. Being charged for a chance at approval is just further capitalization off of the desperation of asylum seekers.
Even in light of the new proposal, I can't say that I’m the least bit surprised. The Trump administration has constantly, from their very first months in office, set out to create a nation by design. They want to cherry pick which immigrants they take, and those aren’t usually the ones who need it most. The administration wants whoever can pay the $50. The wealthy. Whoever can afford to make it over on a plane or in a car rather than on foot or the tops of trains. They don’t want the people who come with just the clothes on their backs. The indigent. “The huddled masses.”
$490 for the income-less to get a work permit. $50 for the despondent to get a chance at asylum. The irony isn’t lost on me but the paradox is intentional. What the Trump administration is asking of immigrants is virtually impossible and that's the whole point. The strategies or agendas aren’t new and I can't pinpoint to you exactly when they started, but they aren’t in consonance with what I had always hoped American immigration policy would shape up to be. Under this administration, that hope has pretty much dwindled, but denying someone’s chance at a better life because they can't pay your petty fee is more drastic than my wildest imagination. At this point, land of the free seems like a stretch but the land of the fee isn’t too far off.