Trump administration says the global asylum system is broken and calls for major changes

By Jennifer Hansler, CNN

(CNN) — A top Trump administration official on Thursday called for changes to long-standing international asylum policies – a move that comes amid a sweeping US shift that has upended and restricted immigration policies at home.

In remarks on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau argued that the current international asylum system and frameworks, including the Refugee Convention, are outdated and have been abused, making “mass illegal migration legal.”

“The asylum system has become a huge loophole in our migration laws, and we just have to be realistic about this,” Landau said at the US-led event, titled “Global Refugee Asylum System: What Went Wrong and How to Fix It.”

The pitch comes as the administration has shut down essentially all refugee resettlement in the United States, only welcoming White South Africans. It has upended its humanitarian policies and pursued aggressive deportation policies that have faced legal challenges.

Earlier in the week, US President Donald Trump said European countries “are going to hell” because of their asylum policies.

“This should be a top international priority to recognize the need to revisit the asylum system in the 21st Century,” Landau said Thursday.

The top official at the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration said that “over the coming months, the United States will convene interested nations to develop and formalize new principles that reflect today’s realities.”

Landau, speaking to a conference room that included diplomats and foreign dignitaries as well as officials from UN agencies and non-governmental organizations, emphasized the need for “sovereignty” and for refugee status to be temporary.

“We get to decide who comes in and under what circumstances and how long,” Landau said, adding that refugees should be compelled to return to their home countries when it’s safe to do so.

Landau’s suggestions are bound to be seized on by far-right parties in countries like the United Kingdom, Germany and France who are challenging incumbent governments by pushing for more restrictive immigration policies.

Landau said that the Trump administration also believes that those fleeing immediate injury in their countries should not be allowed to receive asylum or refugee status in the country of their choice.

“Sometimes we see people who leave one country and traverse maybe a dozen countries to get to another country, right?” Landau said. “That makes it look like this is no longer trying to avoid imminent injury or death, and it makes it look like it’s just a substitute for migration.”

According to Refugees International, “Three quarters of the world’s refugees remain close to their country of origin in low- and middle-income neighboring countries,” noting that the Refugee Convention does not give asylum seekers the right to migrate to a specific country.

Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, urged Landau to work with the UN body to find solutions to “preserve asylum.”

“Asylum is a very ancient concept. It is not something we have invented in the past 80 years,” he said at the event, which he attended as an audience member.

Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, said he feared that the event would “give cover to countries to push refugees out.”

“The worry is with something like this is it undermines the principle that people should not be forced to go home until it is safe for them to do so,’ said Konyndyk, who was also in the audience of the event.

“Ultimately, that’s an ethical thing, but it’s also just a practical thing, because what we see is, if you force people to go home before it’s safe, they’re not going to stay there,” he said.

Landau was joined on a panel with the president of Kosovo, Bangladesh’s national security advisor, the foreign minister of Liberia, and the deputy foreign minister of Panama. The officials on the panel voiced support for reform of the existing asylum system.

However, Liberia’s foreign minister noted, “Sovereignty does not negate shared responsibility, because it’s a global issue.”

CNN’s Kylie Atwood contributed reporting.

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