WASHINGTON, D.C – FWD.us .President Todd Schulte issued the following statement today on the Biden administration’s executive order to limit asylum at the border:

“Today’s announcement is the wrong approach to reducing pressure at the border, improving conditions in cities, or building a more orderly and secure border and providing vulnerable immigrants a chance at refuge. An immigration system that still incentivizes most people to present at the border for processing and that fails to build new legal pathways will not improve border security, nor help the most vulnerable. Any expectation that piling on asylum restrictions many administration’s own officials previously called unlawful will ‘work’ when they have failed before perpetuates a fundamentally flawed approach.

“Instead, the Biden administration should expand their own policies that have actually reduced chaos at the border – policies that have contributed to the significant drop in unauthorized border crossings by approximately two-thirds since this 212f executive action was first floated six months ago. We already know the right approach to reduce unauthorized migration. For example, the combination of building legal pathways that don’t require coming to the border and making appointments available at ports of entry has resulted in drastic drops, often of over 95%, in unauthorized migration from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela at the US-Mexico border. The Biden administration should follow the evidence from these successful efforts to secure the border and build fair, orderly legal pathways that reduce pressure on the asylum system.

“The President must also use his authority to provide long-overdue relief to long-term undocumented residents, many of whom have lived in this country and made our nation stronger and better for decades. It is both a political and moral imperative to provide protection and relief to the undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens, Dreamers, TPS-eligible individuals, and others. The President has the ability to protect and transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of American families. We urge him and his team to uphold the best of our nation’s promises and act right away.”