Near the U.S.-Mexico border, a makeshift collection of multi-colored blankets and tarps blooms in the desert. The people waiting there are migrants from around the world who snuck through a gap where an 18-foot steel wall meets a rocky hill outside a desert town an hour east of San Diego. The camp has a name, hand-painted on a plywood sign: Campo de Asilo, or Asylum Camp. Run by an aid group, it’s a destination for migrants planning to turn themselves in to U.S. border agents and request asylum. That request is the main driver of record illegal immigration in much of the Western world, reports the Wall Street Journal. People travel thousands of miles, on foot and across seas, to turn up at the borders of rich countries to ask for asylum, a form of legal protection for people who face persecution in their home country.
It’s also a loophole for economic migrants, who aren’t under threat but want better working opportunities. Quirks in the law and an overwhelmed processing system nearly guarantee entry, at least for a time. The U.S. received more than 920,000 applications for asylum during its 2023 fiscal year, compared with just 76,000 in 2013. Because a single application can cover multiple members of a family, the figures underestimate the actual numbers of people seeking asylum. Family groups, who now almost always ask for asylum, make up about half the roughly two million people encountered by authorities who illegally crossed the U.S. frontier with Mexico last year. Another half million came through legal ports of entry, many using a new Border Patrol smartphone app to make an appointment to cross and ask for asylum. The numbers have overwhelmed the courts, Customs and Border Protection and the budgets of cities offering shelter to migrants, putting the issue at the top of political debates and the presidential election. A Wall Street Journal national poll in February found that 20% of voters rank immigration as their top issue, ahead of the economy.