I dunno what PL 170 is, I looked it up and could not find any reference to this.
I didn't include what Congress the PL was. But Beginning in 1980, the U.S. government moved from an ad hoc approach to the permanent, standardized system for identifying, vetting, and resettling prospective refugees that is still in use tod
I do not know what the term open border means. Yes, we have the massive ports of entry with zillions of lanes of cars, trucks etc, usually backed up at the main entry points. So yes, the border is open, but most of the drugs come via these entry points because only a tiny percentage of vehicles can be checked with secondary screening. We need more funds, as in the Trump-canned border bill of Biden/Harris for more agents, judges, modern detection equipment and drug dogs who are very good at smelling out illegal drugs.
If someone swims across the river or in a non port of entry, we don't shoot them; we get their ID and process them as refugees. But we need many more border agents and cameras to see them, etc; all in the border bill, Trump told his minions not to vote on since, instead of solving the problem, he wanted to run on it.
Yes, our legal refugee immigration system is a mess, mostly due to the lack of immigration judges, so it can take many years to get before a judge. The processing system is a mess. The Biden/Harris bipartism bill, which went further than ever to address the issue, including stuff many Democrats would oppose to get the needed R's to approve, was likely to pass. Except Trump told his slaves not to consider it since he wanted to use it as a political campaign issue.
Once judges here the cases of those that show up years later, most are rejected since they do no meet the strict definition. But they are technically "legal" until they get before a judge years later and are rejected or accepted.
Under U.S. law, a “refugee” is a person who is unable or unwilling to return to his or her home country because of “persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution” due to race, membership in a particular social group, political opinion, religion, or national origin.viii This definition is based on the United Nations 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocols relating to the Status of Refugees, to which the United States became a party in 1968. Following the Vietnam War and the U.S. experience resettling Southeast Asian refugees, Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980, which incorporated the Convention’s definition into U.S. law and provides the legal basis for today’s U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP)
This next part is likely why, under Biden, the number of accepted is way below the annual cap:
The international definition of a “refugee” encompasses only a subset of the entire population of forcibly displaced individuals. Individuals who are not defined as “refugees” may be forced to leave their homes for reasons other than “persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution.” For instance, as of 2021, there were 4.4 million Venezuelans displaced abroad who did not qualify as either refugees or asylum seekers because they left Venezuela to escape socioeconomic conditions such as violent crime and poverty rather than persecution. Despite the fact that these individuals may not fit within the legal definition of a refugee, they are often referred to colloquially as refugees because they are people who fled terrible conditions in their home countries. This has created considerable confusion about the meaning of the term “refugee,” which can be used either colloquially or legally.
For details see
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/ho...UzxuJFhXrWmQiNoXtmGpXFrDWANaHv8hoCfdQQAvD_BwE
www.bbc.com
