The ongoing battle over asylum in America

Summary

Throughline — The Ongoing Battle Over Asylum in America

NPR, July 9, 2026
Host: Rund Abdelfatah
Featuring: Ramtin Arablouei, Maria Cristina Garcia (Cornell University), Ruth Wasem (Former Congressional Research Service), Lawrence Wu, archival voices

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the fraught history and present reality of the American asylum system, charting its evolution from the late 19th century to the momentous Supreme Court rulings of June 2026. Through archival stories, expert interviews, and legislative deep-dives, Throughline investigates how policies of inclusion and exclusion have arisen in response to moments of crisis, public sentiment, and political calculation. The show traces how the promises at the base of the Statue of Liberty have become contested in law and politics, and what recent changes signal for the future of asylum seekers in the U.S.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Asylum and Its Current Crisis

• Update on 2026 Supreme Court Rulings ([00:19], [09:06], [51:11]):
  • The Supreme Court ruled it is permissible for the Trump administration to require asylum seekers to be turned away at the border without a credible fear interview, and to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.
  • Rund: “The process of seeking asylum...has only become more fraught and more politically charged.”
• The “Promise” of Asylum ([03:19]):
  • The U.S. self-concept as a refuge long “etched into the base of the Statue of Liberty” conflicts with political divides over immigration.

2. What is Asylum? How Does It Differ from Refugee Status?

• Legal Definition ([06:54]):
  • Maria Cristina Garcia: “A well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.”
• Two Parallel Tracks ([07:14]):
  • Refugees: Apply from abroad and wait for approval before admission.
  • Asylum Seekers: Must be physically present in the U.S. or at a port of entry to apply.
  • Ramtin adds: “This is the path my family took to come to the U.S. from Iran.”

3. Barriers in the Asylum Process

• Expedited Removal and Legal Limbo ([08:19], [08:35], [10:00]):
  • Asylum seekers at the border often face “expedited removal,” allowing for deportation within days unless they express credible fear.
  • There are over 3.2 million cases in immigration court, mostly asylum, and only about 700 immigration judges ([10:06]).
  • Asylum seekers may wait in detention or be released into the U.S. without eligibility for most federal benefits.

Notable Quotes:

• Maria Cristina Garcia ([08:50]): “Oftentimes when you’re fleeing for your life, you don’t have time to pick up the supporting documentation...Oftentimes you don’t even have proof of identity.”
• Rund Abdelfatah ([09:06]): “The June 2026 ruling...gives the Trump administration the power to turn people away from the U.S. border before they even get the chance to speak to an official and do that credible fear interview.”

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4. Historical Roots: From Open Doors to Quota Systems

Immigration before Asylum Law ([12:12]):

• Massive migration with few restrictions, but policies became increasingly restrictive, culminating in the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 ([13:36]).
  • Quotas were based on 1890 census to reduce non-Western European immigration.
  • Emmanuel Seller (Congressman) condemned the Act’s racist underpinnings:

    “The Italian is told he's not wanted. The Poles confronted with the stigma of inferiority. Fortunate is the one whose cradle was rocked in Germany or England.” — Seller ([14:36])

• Motivations ([16:29]):
  • Maria Cristina Garcia: “It’s economic concerns, but it’s also cultural and political...that are driving the passage of these draconian immigration laws...”

Response to the Holocaust ([17:37], [19:04]):

• Despite widespread knowledge of Nazi persecution, U.S. limited refugee admissions; quotas for European Jews were “unfilled” due to national security concerns and antisemitism.
  • Maria Cristina Garcia:

    “...it’s really antisemitism that is shaping who we allow in and in what numbers.” ([18:34])

  • After WWII, the first U.S. law to help displaced persons passed in 1948 but was considered inadequate and Eurocentric.

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5. Patchwork Solutions to Refugee Crises

• Ad-Hoc Lawmaking ([21:55], [23:15]):
  • U.S. response to refugee crises was a “hodgepodge of loopholes.”
  • Broader reforms—the 1965 Hart-Celler Act—removed old quotas but provided minimal refugee provisions ([25:42]).
  • Ruth Wasem: “He had to drop out the refugee provisions...it was part of the negotiations.”

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6. Forging a Modern Asylum System: Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti

Vietnam War & Refugee Act of 1980 ([28:09], [32:34]):

• Crowds fleeing the fall of Saigon highlighted the need for a clear resettlement system.
• 1980 Refugee Act created a separate category for refugees and asylum seekers, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, and mechanisms for funding and integration.
  • Landmark in creating a “pathway to permanent residency.”
  • Ruth Wasem: “There was a window and a crying need to have this.” ([30:49])
• Mass influxes—such as the Mariel boatlift (126,000 Cubans)—immediately tested the new policy and stoked public backlash ([35:31]).

Inequitable Response: Cubans vs. Haitians ([36:09], [40:33]):

• U.S. was far more open to Cubans fleeing Castro than Haitians fleeing Duvalier, as foreign policy interests trumped humanitarian concern.
  • Maria Cristina Garcia: "If you were coming without authorization from Cuba...you were allowed to stay. But if you were coming from Haiti, you were not." ([40:33])

Politics and the Asylum System

• Cuban resettlement became a political issue in local elections (e.g., Bill Clinton losing re-election for Arkansas governor after unrest at Fort Chaffee, [44:29]).

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7. The “Enforcement Era”: Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA) of 1996

• Expanding Enforcement ([45:28], [46:44]):
  • Increased border patrol, more deportable offenses, strict bans for overstays, expanded detention.
  • Instituted expedited removal—allowing immigration officers, not judges, to decide at the border.
  • Maria Cristina Garcia: “[It gives] an immigration officer at a port of entry enormous authority without oversight...” ([47:16])
• Collateral Damage:
  • Ruth Wasem: “Trying to come up with more efficient ways to do things often comes at the price of someone’s human rights.” ([49:18])
• Lack of Comparable Funding ([50:03]):
  • Enforcement budgets soared, but processing and court funding lagged, creating backlogs and bottlenecks.

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8. Recent Turmoil and the Future of Asylum

• 2026 Supreme Court Rulings ([51:11]):
  • Empowered the Trump administration to turn asylum seekers away at the border without credible fear interviews.
  • Ended Temporary Protected Status for about 356,000 individuals, opening the door for mass deportations.

Contextualizing Today’s Backlash

• Maria Cristina Garcia: “We have tended to villainize immigrants, but we don’t always recognize...how we have contributed to their displacement and the ways that we profit from their migration.” ([53:07])
• Ruth Wasem: “From my perspective, immigration is not a problem to be solved. It’s a phenomenon to be managed...whenever there is a perception...that we have lost control, people are upset.” ([54:12])

Climate Change and Future Displacement ([54:39]):

• Maria Cristina Garcia: “Especially displacement caused by climate change...nations certainly in this region need to work together to address why people are moving.”

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Most Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “It is legal to seek asylum, and the U.S. has long professed that it’s a country where people can come to do that.” — Ramtin Arablouei ([03:19])
• “Our entire immigration system is based on laws second only to the tax code in the volume of law, the complexity of which gets down to the very detailed particulars of who’s eligible and who isn’t. Refugees in asylees were always an afterthought in that system.” — Lawrence Wu ([11:24])
• “Trying to come up with more efficient ways to do things often comes at the price of someone’s human rights.” — Ruth Wasem ([49:18])
• “Immigration is not a problem to be solved. It’s a phenomenon to be managed.” — Ruth Wasem ([54:12])
• “We have tended to villainize immigrants, but...we have contributed to their displacement and the ways that we profit from their migration.” — Maria Cristina Garcia ([53:07])

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Important Timestamps

• [00:19] – Rund Abdelfatah introduces the topic and the 2026 Supreme Court rulings
• [06:54] – Definition of an asylum seeker by Maria Cristina Garcia
• [09:06] – Rund explains the implications of the Supreme Court's recent ruling
• [10:06] – Scale of immigration court backlog
• [13:36] – Quotas and the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act
• [18:34] – Anti-Semitism and the WWII-era refugee policy
• [25:42] – The 1965 Hart-Celler Act and partial inclusion of refugees
• [32:34] – Passing of the Refugee Act of 1980
• [35:31] – The Mariel boatlift and U.S. response
• [46:01] – Summary and consequences of the 1996 IIRAIRA
• [51:11] – Rund updates on 2026 SCOTUS rulings, end of TPS
• [54:12] – Ruth Wasem on managing immigration, not solving it

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Conclusion

Throughline’s deep historical dive reveals that the refugee and asylum system in the U.S. has always balanced between humanitarian ideals and political pressures, with policies responding to foreign crises, domestic anxieties, and shifting priorities. The recent Supreme Court rulings are the latest pivot in an ongoing American story: one marked by selective openness, recurring fears of loss of control, and a continual negotiation of the nation’s role as both refuge and gatekeeper.

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For more, listen and subscribe to Throughline on NPR.

Transcript

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[Rund Abdelfatah]

Since we first ran this episode in 2024, the process of seeking asylum in this country has only become more fraught and more politically charged. And in June of this year, the Supreme Court passed two rulings that could make seeking safe haven in this country even more difficult. So we're bringing you this episode on how we got the asylum system we have with a few updates about these new rulings and what it means for the future of asylum in the US

[Poetry Reader]

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus not like the brazen giant of Greek fame with conquering limbs astride from land to land, Here at our sea washed sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch.

[Narrator / Historian]

This poem, written in 1883, is etched into the base of the Statue of Liberty.

[Poetry Reader]

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Send these the homeless tempest tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

He says he's planning to swim across the Rio Grande and ask for asylum. You want to secure the border?

[Caller / Interviewee]

There's three things you need to do. Number one, you need to change asylum laws.

[Lawrence Wu]

Mayor Adams says supporting asylum seekers is putting New York City into a financial crisis.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This issue will destroy New York City.

[Lawrence Wu]

They're welcome if they come legally. They're not welcome if they're illegal. Earlier today, President Biden signed an executive order that shuts down asylum claims once they reach a certain level.

[Caller / Interviewee]

Our country is full.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And when he's back in the White House, President Elect Trump has probably promised to immediately crack down. Can't take you anymore.

[Caller / Interviewee]

I'm sorry. Can't happen. So turn around.

[Narrator / Historian]

In 2023, 1.6 million immigrants arrived in the U.S. that same year, more than 450,000 people filed for asylum, the highest number on record.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Put very simply, and we'll get into this more later, asylum seekers are fleeing persecution in their home countries and asking to be allowed to stay in the

[Narrator / Historian]

US to request asylum, you first have

[Rund Abdelfatah]

to be inside the US and many

[Narrator / Historian]

of the people seeking asylum now cross into the US Via the border with Mexico, which is part of what puts asylum at the center of immigration policy debates. While Americans don't all agree on what the solutions are to immigration, the majority say that the number of people seeking to enter at the southern border is a problem and that the government is

[Rund Abdelfatah]

doing a bad job of addressing it.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

But it is legal to seek asylum, and the US has long professed that it's a country where people can come to do that. That's the promise etched into the base of the Statue of Liberty. It's an idea that remains at the heart of many of the debates about immigration today, debates that are and have long been only ultimately about when, why and to whom we open our doors.

[Caller / Interviewee]

It was a heartbreaking thing to see those refugees when they came into West Germany.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

He tried to come to this country in the hope of a better future. I left Vietnam on May 12, 1979,

[Caller / Interviewee]

on a very small boat, and they didn't have anything to eat. They were sick.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

We got nothing left except the clothes

[Ramtin Arablouei]

we wear on our body.

[Narrator / Historian]

God willing, the judge gives us the opportunity on that day to obtain asylum

[Lawrence Wu]

in this great country.

[Narrator / Historian]

I'm Rund Abdel Fattah.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And I'm Ramtin Arablouei. Coming up, the story of how the US Asylum system was forged in response to moments of crisis and where it left gaps, from Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust to Cuban and Haitian asylum seekers during the Cold War, to the precarious system of today.

[Caller / Interviewee]

Hi, this is Emile Hartz from Denver, and you're listening to Throughline from npr. I wanted to also generally thank you. You have changed my life for the better.

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[Ramtin Arablouei]

Before we get into the history of the asylum system, we first need to understand more about what asylum is and how it's different from other immigration pathways to the U.S. bear with us as we go through this. It's all going to pay off later, so first things first. What defines an asylum seeker?

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

A well founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

These criteria come from the 1951 United nations refugee Convention. And like the name suggests, refugees and asylum seekers have to meet the same standards.

[Lawrence Wu]

While the definition is the same, I would argue it's harder to meet the definition of an asylee than meet the definition of a refugee.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

So refugees and asylum seekers, same criteria, but two parallel tracks in our immigration system. Refugees start their process outside the US Maybe at a US Embassy or a refugee camp. And they stay outside the US until they're approved for resettlement. This is the path my family took to come to the US from Iran.

[Narrator / Historian]

For asylum seekers, the process looks different. Their journey through the system begins after they've already arrived in the US or at what's called a port of entry.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

It could be an airport like JFK or Dulles.

[Narrator / Historian]

This is Maria Cristina Garcia. She's a professor of history at Cornell University who studies immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

Or it could be another port of entry like the U.S. mexico border or the U.S. canada border.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

For those arriving at a port of entry at the border, most are put into expedited removal proceedings, which can mean deportation within days. To stop this, they then have to express a fear of returning to their home country to an official at the border.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

An official at the port of entry will interview them to determine if they have a credible fear of persecution if they were returned to their home country. And the burden of proof for this is on the asylum seeker, which isn't always easy.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

Oftentimes when you're fleeing for your life, you don't have time to pick up the supporting documentation that you need that might help to make a successful case for asylum. Oftentimes you don't even have proof of identity.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And that kind of thing can count against you.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

A quick side Note here, the June 2026 ruling from the Supreme Court has to do specifically with those coming through the southern border and the definition of being in the U.S. the ruling gives the Trump administration the power to turn people away from the US border before they even get the chance to speak to an official and do that credible fear interview. It's a policy started under the Obama administration and expanded under Trump. It's meant to stem the flow of people attempting to apply for asylum.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

There's a belief that the person who is requesting asylum intends to deceive and will say just, just about anything in order to enter the United States.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Those who aren't granted asylum after their interview might be scheduled to have a hearing in immigration court where they can further plead their case. But getting in front of a judge is easier said than done.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

There's a huge backlog. It can be as long as three years before you have your first hearing.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Currently, the backlog in US immigration courts is over 3.2 million cases, 2.3 million of which are pending asylum cases. There are only around 700 immigration judges in the US handling the massive backlog.

[Lawrence Wu]

Refugees and asylees and border security, they're all interlocking.

[Narrator / Historian]

This is Ruth Wasam. She spent nearly three decades working at the Congressional Research Service researching immigration policy.

[Lawrence Wu]

And that complexity is very difficult to maneuver if you're a potential immigrant or a potential refugee, and if you're a policymaker trying to come up with reasonable policies to deal with the 21st century.

[Narrator / Historian]

While asylum seekers wait, they're in legal limbo. Some are held in detention as they wait for their case to be decided, but most are released into the US if they don't get a decision on their case in 150 days, which is basically impossible given the backlog, they become eligible for work authorization, but until their case is decided, they're generally not eligible for federal benefits.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

If this all seems super complicated, it's because it is.

[Lawrence Wu]

Our entire immigration system is based on laws second only to the tax code in the volume of law, the complexity of which gets down to the very detailed particulars of who's eligible and who isn't. Refugees in asylees, we're always an afterthought in that system.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

So why do we have this system?

[Poetry Reader]

Send these the homeless Tempest tossed to

[Caller / Interviewee]

me

[Poetry Reader]

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

[Narrator / Historian]

We're back at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, before any sort of asylum system even existed. It was a period of massive immigration. People from China, Germany, Ireland, and England who were leaving behind famines and job shortages. People fleeing the Balkan Wars, Russians fleeing the Russian Revolution and Jewish people fleeing anti Semitic pogroms.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Today we might call some of these people asylum seekers or refugees. But back then the US didn't have those legal categories.

[Narrator / Historian]

Many of these immigrants came through Ellis island in New York City or Angel island off San Francisco. They often settled nearby, creating new ethnic enclaves and in immigrant neighborhoods. And Congress took notice.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

Congress began to pass ever more draconian laws to restrict immigration from different parts of the world. And the laws reflected who they were most concerned about at a particular moment in time.

[Narrator / Historian]

They reflected growing nativist sentiments in the

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

US So with every passing decade, different populations were targeted for control. So first it was the Chinese, but then it was other Asian populations. Political radicals, southern and Eastern Europeans, Mormons and homosexuals.

[Narrator / Historian]

Until it all culminated in one bill, the Johnson Reed act. Also known as the Immigration act of 1924. The bill would limit immigration by setting strict quotas for each country.

[Lawrence Wu]

They went back to the census data and they allocated annual admissions of immigrants based on the percent of the US population 1890 that was living here. So that we didn't get so many Italians, didn't get so many Serbians, didn't get so many people from Russia, people

[Interviewer]

who, some of whom today would be considered white American, but at that time they weren't then.

[Emmanuel Suller]

This bill has already done more than anything I know of to bring about discord among our resident aliens.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Emmanuel Seller was one of the few people in Congress to speak out against this bill.

[Emmanuel Suller]

The Italian is told he's not wanted the polls. Confronted with the stigma of inferiority. Fortunate is the one whose cradle was rocked in Germany or England.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

It was his first year as a representative from New York and I'm not

[Lawrence Wu]

one to talk about great men in terms of his history as being explained by great men. But I am someone to talk about perseverance and people that do seize the moment. Emanuel Sellars was one of that.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Emanuel Seller was the grandson of immigrants.

[Lawrence Wu]

He was a German Jew. Started out as a young lawyer, he

[Ramtin Arablouei]

had built a law practice around helping immigrants who had broken the law and were under the threat of deportation. He thought the bill would create resentment towards the United States and other parts of the world because of how restrictive it was towards people from Asia or

[Emmanuel Suller]

Eastern Europe thanks to the ill considered and improvident Johnson bill. And so race is set against race, class against class.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Despite Emmanuel Suller's protests, the 1924 Immigration act passed both the House and Senate with overwhelming majorities. It was signed into law in May 1924 and for the next several decades, it would limit immigration by imposing strict quotas. The highest quota was the 65,000 spots given to Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But more than three dozen countries from Ethiopia to Iraq border were given just 100 spots each. And immigration from Asia was effectively banned.

[Interviewer]

What would you say is the driving kind of social force that culminates in such a, as you say, draconian measure against immigration?

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

Well, there was a concern that the numbers were just too large, you know, that millions of people were coming in during a very short period of time. And they wondered what they the influx of so many people in a short period of time would mean for democratic institutions, would mean for the cultural makeup of the United States, what it would mean for the prosperity of the country. So it's economic concerns, but it's also cultural and political concerns that are driving the passage of these draconian immigration laws in the first decades of the 20th century.

[Interviewer]

So these laws pass, and then the 1924 act, you know, really takes it to an even more severe level. One of the targets in this early 20th century period is specifically Eastern European Jews. And as we move into the post World War I period and the pre World War II period, can you describe what is happening around that community? In particular when it comes to the attempted immigration to the US as war

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

expands across Europe in the 1930s and before the US enters the Second World War, there are many opportunities to accommodate Jewish refugees who are fleeing Europe within the law. Even though the quotas are quite small, there are still opportunities, and we forfeit that opportunity. During the 1930s and into the 1940s, the quotas from Europe remain unfilled. Some immigrants historians have posited that, you know, there's a concern with sponsoring spies and saboteurs that might hurt the United States. And it's those national security concerns that are dictating U.S. policy.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

People at the highest levels of government, including President Franklin Roosevelt, supported extra scrutiny and restrictions on refugees from World War II, particularly Jewish refugees.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

Others have made a convincing argument that it's really anti Semitism, that is, that is shaping who we allow in and in what numbers.

[Interviewer]

I mean, the Nazis were making their intentions clear throughout the 30s, but once the war breaks out, I mean, now it was. They were implementing these policies explicitly. And you had Roosevelt in office in the US Someone who was arguably maybe the most progressive president of the 20th century.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

You're absolutely right. And he fails to exercise any political will. When you look at the arc of refugee history in the United States, you see that at distinct Moments. There are either presidents or members of Congress who feel that we have a humanitarian obligation to assist a particular population. And they use all the methods at their disposal. They exercise political will to make it happen. Even though the public opinion polls are telling them that Americans are ambivalent or outright opposed to the admission of more people, they still find a way to make it happen because they think it's the right thing to do. But clearly, at this moment, there is no political will.

[Interviewer]

After World War II ends and the, you know, and the horrors of the Holocaust become plain for everyone to see, how does that impact what happens to the refugee system in the US you

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

would think that as Americans become more and more aware of the horrors of the Holocaust, that there would have been overwhelming support to bend, if not break, immigrants immigration laws to accommodate the survivors of the Holocaust and survivors of the European conflict and the conflict in Asia. But there really isn't. The first piece of legislation to pass to accommodate displaced persons passes in 1948. It takes three years for Congress to pass any legislation to accommodate displaced people from the European conflict. And even then, you know, this law only focuses on Europe. There's no attempt to even recognize that there are people in need in Asia. So the Displaced Persons act focuses largely on accommodating displaced Europeans and accommodating ethnic Germans in particular. In fact, the number of Jewish refugees who are accommodated initially through the Displaced Persons act is quite small.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

If the Congress were still in session, I would return this bill without my approval and urged that a fairer, more humane bill be passed.

[Narrator / Historian]

This is the statement that President Harry S. Truman put out after he signed the 1948 Displaced Persons act into law.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

He signs it reluctantly, but he feels that it's a law that does not exemplify American values.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The bill discriminates in callous fashion against displaced persons of the Jewish faith. This brutal fact cannot be obscured by the maze of technicalities in the bill.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

What we see happening are different laws that are passed on an ad hoc basis to deal with particular emergencies. So the Displaced Persons act is an attempt to respond to the crisis in Europe. But then other laws are passed to accommodate particular groups of people. So there's the War Brides act, for example, to bring in the European and Asian spouses and family members of American service personnel, because we want to make sure that they're happy, we want to recognize their service, and we want to make sure that their families remain intact.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This was passed in the wake of World War II, and other laws followed specific to other groups.

[Interviewer]

So you're basically getting the beginnings of a refugee system that's kind of a hodgepodge of loopholes is what it sounds like. Right? It's like, oh, okay, we need to make space for, you know, war brides, as you said, we need to make space for European Jews, you know, so. So we're making these sort of accommodations. But it doesn't seem like at this point there's a sort of philosophy around refugees really being articulated through the system. It seems like it's sort of a let's react to the latest sort of crisis that's arisen.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

You're right. It's not really until the 1965 Hart Celler act that these quotas are completely overhauled and we get a very, very different immigration system.

[Narrator / Historian]

The 1965 Hart Celler Act. If something about that name sounds familiar, that's because it is.

[Emmanuel Suller]

Throughout all these years as a member of Congress, I fought for change. I do not want to wait another 40 years.

[Narrator / Historian]

Emmanuel Seller, who spoke out in 1924 against immigration quotas, is still in Congress, and he's still mad about those quotas.

[Lawrence Wu]

Almost every Congress that he served in, in addition to introducing legislation to get rid of the quota laws, he also had civil rights and voting rights bills. So he spent his entire, entire legislative career on these issues.

[Narrator / Historian]

And at the height of the civil rights movement, he saw that he finally had the political momentum to finish this career long battle to get rid of the quota laws once and for all.

[Emmanuel Suller]

I respectfully submit that the fears and phobias of four decades ago have no place in our society in 1964.

[Narrator / Historian]

This is an excerpt of the speech Seller gave to Congress nearly 40 years later to the day after his very first speech on the House floor.

[Lawrence Wu]

He was a seasoned person by this point. He was negotiating, and he wanted to get this across the finish line.

[Emmanuel Suller]

I want to make it clear, since every discussion surrounding immigration changes is obscured by arguments about our unemployment, our lack of classrooms, our housing. We're not talking about increased immigration. We're talking about equality of opportunity for all peoples to reach this promised land.

[Narrator / Historian]

The Hart Cellar act passed, and with it came a new system. Instead of quotas that were different for each country, the act created a system based primarily on immigrants, family relationships with U.S. citizens or permanent residents. There were still caps on the number of people who would be let in legally, but they were broader and didn't prioritize any one country. These changes opened the golden door to people who had been restricted for decades.

[Lawrence Wu]

Manuel Sellers. However, in order to pass the 65 act, you know what? He had to drop out the refugee provisions. He had to drop out the refugee provisions. It was part of the negotiations.

[Narrator / Historian]

In the end, the law made space for 6% of visas to be given out to refugees. It was the first time Congress had permanently authorized such a thing. But it soon turned out it wasn't enough. That's coming up.

[Caller / Interviewee]

This is Austin from Charlotte calling again three years later, and you're listening to Throughline on npr.

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[Rund Abdelfatah]

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[Ramtin Arablouei]

Back in the city, normal patterns of behavior broke down in a climate of every man for himself, American Homes officers April 1975 Saigon was in chaos as the North Vietnamese army drew closer to the city, the capital of South Vietnam, US Forces were rushing to get both American and South Vietnamese people out. A North Vietnamese tank broke the gate

[Caller / Interviewee]

at the president's palace in Saigon. A Communist soldier ran the revolution's flag across the empty lawn.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

On April 30, the North Vietnamese army finally captured the capital, renaming it Ho Chi Minh City and marking the end of the Vietnam War and the beginning of a refugee crisis.

[Lawrence Wu]

We had thousands of people coming, ruth

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Wason, former researcher at the Congressional Research Office. The American airlift only took a fraction of those who wanted to leave. And for hours after the last departure,

[Caller / Interviewee]

scores of people were standing separated and crying out for help, pleading not to be left behind, clutching at the last draw of hope.

[Lawrence Wu]

And these were wars. We were the lead player in US

[Narrator / Historian]

actions had contributed to the crisis. But the idea of welcoming refugees from the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos was not too popular in the U.S. a 1975 Gallup poll found that only 36% of Americans favored allowing Vietnamese refugees to rebuild their lives here.

[Lawrence Wu]

The public opinion had never been supportive of refugees in the United States unless it was a small number. If it was going to be 100,000 people of displaced persons, maybe a third of the country supported that. And immigration has always been the politics of numbers. Thresholds are important. People are generous literally to a point.

[Interviewer]

Like if it feels like there's a

[Lawrence Wu]

literal wave, yes, that's where it gets dodgy. Because a lot of times when there's mass asylum or refugee crisis, it's a wave. These don't happen in a trickle unless it's something like people fleeing the former Soviet Union, where you couldn't get out.

[Narrator / Historian]

On top of the public disapproval, the immigration system was also struggling to handle the influx of people. The 1965 Hart Cellar act had not set up a system for resettlement in

[Lawrence Wu]

the US Creating a refugee category was extremely important. There was a window and a crying need to have this.

[Narrator / Historian]

Now it was up to Congress to write some legislation which quickly became a mess. There were legislators who wanted to make refugees part of the pre existing immigration system, which meant they'd be subject to the same numerical limits as other immigration pathways. Other legislators said, wait a minute, that's not going to work. Because then refugees would be competing for spots with immigrants coming to the US for work or to reunite with family members.

[Lawrence Wu]

It's pretty hard when you have a political consensus for limiting the numbers to then start to have fights over refugees versus family.

[Interviewer]

That's why they wanted to create a separate track.

[Lawrence Wu]

They wanted a totally separate track.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

But nobody could come up with a way to impose limits on the new system that everyone could agree on. So they landed on a compromise.

[Lawrence Wu]

They said Congress will do a consultation with the President every year to set the numbers because of the President's foreign policy role.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Like in the case of Vietnamese refugees. President Jimmy Carter, who'd taken office in 1977, wanted to make sure that people who'd helped Americans in the war were able to resettle in the US afterwards.

[Lawrence Wu]

A president never wanted Congress to be able to control refugees because it's a. Diplomacy is so important. Congress didn't want to cede power because they had control over immigration. They write the laws, they control it. And so that was the compromise.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The 1980 Refugee act passed 85. 0.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Lawrence Wu]

Overwhelmingly packed it was legislative drafting and negotiations at its finest.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

President Carter signed it into law in March of that year.

[Narrator / Historian]

This law created the Office of Refugee Resettlement that we still have today. It created a process for refugees to be admitted and a pathway to permanent residency. It laid out all kinds of federally funded resources that should be available to refugees, like job training and English language classes. And it said that the federal government would supply resources and funding to offset any burden to the states where refugees were resettled.

[Lawrence Wu]

And the euphoria of finally, after all these years, passing the Refugee Act. And the ink was hardly dry and we had the Mariel boat lift.

[Narrator / Historian]

By 1980, Fidel Castro had ruled over Cuba for over two decades. Castro's regime was politically repressive. He dismantled the free press, executed political enemies, and threw dissidents in jail. Cuba was a communist country 90 miles away from the United States.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

It was in the middle of the Cold War. Over the next few decades, hundreds of thousands of Cubans migrated to the United States as refugees of Castro's regime. Off and on, Castro would close the island nation's borders and prevent Cuban citizens from leaving. But in April 1980,

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

Fidel Castro announces that he is opening up the port of Mariel.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This is Maria Cristina Garcia, professor of history at Cornell University, and he invites

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

Cuban Americans living in South Florida and other parts of the US to sail into the port of Mariel and pick up their relatives.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Castro's announcement meant that any Cuban citizen who wanted to leave could get on a boat and head for the United States to seek asylum. And the federal government felt an obligation to accept these people who were fleeing a communist regime in the height of the Cold War.

[Lawrence Wu]

Coast Guard officials fear there may be dozens, perhaps even hundreds of boats adrift in the Florida Straits without radios, unable to contact rescuers.

[Local Resident / Interviewee]

I asked several people how many refugees they thought would come here eventually. One man sitting on a bench gave a tank.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Everybody because the whole world wants to come. If they let them out, then Fidel will stay there in Cuba by himself. Everybody wants to come. Only Fidel will stay behind.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

Over the next couple of months, the Mariel boat lift, as it came to be known, brings in about 126,000 people from Cuba.

[Lawrence Wu]

City officials and local volunteer organizations are working round the clock to try to get funded food, clothing and shelter for the Cubans.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

So at the same time that Congress is passing this Refugee act, we're dealing with this humanitarian crisis with Cuba, and the Carter administration is trying to impose order.

[Lawrence Wu]

It was a true crisis of mass asylum. I'm sure people drowned at sea, it was a humanitarian crisis.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

To make matters worse, on top of the Cubans arriving at this time, 25,000 more people were showing up in Florida from Haiti, where they were fleeing dictator Jean Claude Duvalier.

[Lawrence Wu]

Lots of federal money had to go down to protect them, feed and clothe them. Local communities didn't have the capacity. They had set up these refugee resettlement programs. That was a main feature of the Refugee act in 1980, was that it wouldn't be a burden on communities to have people come in because they'd set up, you know, what was originally intended to be three years of transitional assistance in social services until they were well established in the community. And suddenly you have this, an influx of people. How do you even process it? We hardly had any asylum officers, right.

[Interviewer]

Like, I mean, the act had just passed, really. It's the first time, right, that like asylum as we know it is being tested, that people are going to land, you know, in the US and requests to stay.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

And the 1980s become a key decade for the asylum system. The 1980 Refugee act provides a mechanism for granting asylum, and that too is new. But, you know, prior to the 1980s, most Americans didn't really think about asylum seekers. If they heard about asylum seekers, it was usually high profile individuals who defected from a communist country, say a Russian ballet dancer or a Chinese physicists. Those high profile individuals received a lot of attention because of their defection. The Maria boatlift in 1980 really put asylum on the national consciousness. Right.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And people weren't necessarily happy to throw open America's doors.

[Lawrence Wu]

Good evening. Politicians from several states tonight are sharply criticizing President Carter's handling of the Cuban refugee problem.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

I believe that Americans should not take so many people in that they can't take care of their own people.

[Lawrence Wu]

I don't think it's right. And then, I mean, all right, the government support, but we pay the tax.

[Narrator / Historian]

Dehumanizing language was common.

[Local Resident / Interviewee]

And other refugee groups are now asking for the same special treatment afforded the Cubans, such as the Haitian boat people who staged a protest and hunger strike in front of the White House today. The 1980 Refugee act was supposed to take care of problems like these, but it hasn't.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

You can imagine that many Americans of this time period felt that this other country, Cuba, was dictating US Immigration policy, and they demanded that something be done about it.

[Narrator / Historian]

Unfortunately for Jimmy Carter, this was all unfolding during an election year where he's running against Ronald Reagan.

[Lawrence Wu]

I don't think it was the issue that defeated Carter for reelection, but it certainly didn't help him.

[Narrator / Historian]

Ronald Reagan won in a landslide victory where Carter only carried six states. Over the next few years, Reagan would allow Cubans who had come during the boat lift to be processed and obtain legal residency status.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

But when it came to Haitians, one of Reagan's early acts in office was to change the way the US approached Haitian immigrants coming by sea.

[Lawrence Wu]

He signed an interdiction agreement with the dictator of Haiti.

[Narrator / Historian]

Interdiction basically meant that when a U.S. coast Guard vessel came across Haitian boats, they would intercept them before they could even reach US soil, before people on board had a chance to make an asylum claim.

[Lawrence Wu]

So for many, many years, Haitians were interdicted on the high SEAS by the U.S. coast Guard and sent back to Haiti.

[Narrator / Historian]

The United States had backed the Duvalier dictatorships for years, hoping to keep communism from spreading from Cuba to Haiti. The US had opened its doors to Cubans as a statement against communism, and it closed them to Haitians who were fleeing a regime the US supported. For the first decade of this policy, over 25,000 Haitian immigrants were intercepted by the coast guard, and only 28 were allowed to enter the US to pursue asylum claims.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

So if you were coming without authorization from Cuba during the Cold War and even in the post Cold War period, you were allowed to stay. But if you were coming from Haiti, you were not.

[Lawrence Wu]

Cubans already had a diaspora that was politically powerful and politically sophisticated.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lawrence Wu]

They had well established, prominent, vocal Cuban American community in a position to advocate for them, and Haitians did not. And also an administration wasn't going to negotiate a deal like that with Castro. Whereas Duvalier was open for business.

[Interviewer]

How much do you see the refugee sort of calculus as a political calculus and how much is it a humanitarian one in this period?

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

It's both. You know, I think there is genuine humanitarian concern that has dictated and shaped our refugee policy. But refugee policy has also served foreign policy interests, and it's oftentimes very hard to separate the two.

[Lawrence Wu]

I would argue the ghost of Mario kind of haunted people trying to deal with asylum ever since.

[Narrator / Historian]

That's coming up.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

You're listening to throughout line from npr.

[Sponsor Voice]

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[Caller / Interviewee]

There is a great deal of mixed emotion in this nation today about the refugees which are teeming to our shores from Cuba.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

In 1980, Bill Clinton was a strapping young governor with a soft twang. He was in the midst of his re election campaign when the fallout from the Mariel boat lift seeped its way into his state of Arkansas. President Carter ordered 20,000 Cuban refugees to be housed temporarily at Fort Chaffee in northwest Arkansas.

[Caller / Interviewee]

But there is one thing that I think we should remember overriding all the problems they present, and that is that after all of our faults and our failures, there are still tens of thousands of people who believe we are a beacon of freedom and hope.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

At first, Clinton was publicly supportive of President Carter. But soon tensions inside and outside the fort's walls reached a breaking point as the population of the camp swelled.

[Interviewer]

In that incident at Fort Chaffee, several hundred Cuban refugees burned buildings and fought with troops.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

45 people were injured politically. It wasn't a good look for Governor Clinton. And it was an election year, so he was scrambling to contain the situation.

[Caller / Interviewee]

They persist disrupting the people of the area, unless you should be right, turned back to where where they came from.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

His opponent in the governor's race, a man named Frank D. White, used this moment against him. He campaigned on the slogan Cubans and car tax, two issues that he advertised as Clinton's failures for the people of Arkansas.

[Narrator / Historian]

In the election that fall, Clinton was ousted. It was the only time he'd failed to win re election. Over a decade later, as president, Clinton had learned from the political pitfalls of Mariel.

[Caller / Interviewee]

All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country.

[Narrator / Historian]

When a bill landed on his desk in 1996, a bill that was it was a crackdown.

[Lawrence Wu]

It was a big enforcement bill he signed it.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

And it's a mammoth piece of legislation.

[Narrator / Historian]

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility act of 1996, also known as IR IRA. A mouthful.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

I know.

[Narrator / Historian]

This bill is important, though. It represented a turning point in the US's immigration policy. It was the beginning of a shift in focus towards cracking down on unauthorized migration. The law ramped up funding for the Border Patrol, expanded the list of offenses that could lead to deportation, created bans on reentry for people who overstayed their visas in the us and expanded the scope of mandatory detention.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

And caught up within this immigration policy are the asylum seekers.

[Interviewer]

If a newspaper had been publishing like the 96 act has been passed, what would the sort of top bullet points be of what it did?

[Lawrence Wu]

Asylum reforms, a lot of them, like not automatically getting a work authorization and things that were aimed at not making it too attractive again.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This is Ruth Wasam. She's a former researcher with the Congressional Research Service.

[Lawrence Wu]

They criminalized a lot more things, and that was the intention.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

So it's this law that creates the policy known as expedited removal.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And Maria Cristina Garcia, she's a professor of history at Cornell University.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

And the law gives an immigration officer at a port of entry enormous authority without oversight to make a decision on the spot whether to admit a person into the United States to make a case for asylum. And if the individual fails to pass that credible fear test, if they fail

[Ramtin Arablouei]

to prove they have a credible fear of persecution, if they were returned to their home country, then the person is

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

removed from the United as quickly as possible.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Before this long, if you didn't have

[Lawrence Wu]

proper documents, you would show up, you would request asylum, and you would get a court date, and you'd usually be released in the country. If they were suspicious of you, they certainly had the authority to detain you. But the guy that made the decision was the judge in the immigration courts.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Lawrence Wu]

And so that was a key difference. The 96 act increased the power of an immigration inspector to make decisions about inadmissibility that had previously only been made by the courts.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Narrator / Historian]

Okay.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

It's a policy that many immigration advocates feel needs to be reformed. That in order to make the system fairer and more humane, you really need to have multiple levels of oversight to make sure that bona fide asylum seekers are not penalized, are not subject to prejudice, and removed from the United States to face persecution and possible death. Right. This 1996 law is an example of how, in an attempt to address unauthorized migration, a lot of populations fall victim to that oversight.

[Narrator / Historian]

It was a policy Shift that leaned heavily towards law enforcement and crackdowns in a time when concerns over unauthorized immigration were growing. And while funding for US Customs and Border Protection has increased over the years, other parts of the immigration system have been stretched thin.

[Lawrence Wu]

And so these are very real tensions in terms of what are the legal protections we provide asylum seekers. And under international law, we're supposed to do these things, and so are other countries. But we get very economical when we have a large number of people. And trying to come up with more efficient ways to do things often comes at the price of someone's human rights.

[Interviewer]

I want to understand how ira, IRA sets us up for the modern era. How would you say it shapes the future of asylum leading us up to the present? And also since that time, what would you say has changed?

[Lawrence Wu]

There wasn't comparable funding that would have to deal with what would be the outcomes of increased enforcement, the outcomes of better screening at the border and all these technologies. We didn't do it. And so what do we end up with? Huge bottlenecks. And when you don't have equilibrium in these things, that's what you get.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

In the years since IRA IRA, there have been huge increases in funding. U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, was created in 2003. Until recently, it operated on a $10 billion a year budget. 2025's one big beautiful bill act provided the agency with a historic $75 billion budget increase. But funding for other parts of the immigration system have not been comparably increased. And one last update here. In June of 2026, the Supreme Court also ruled that the Trump administration could end Temporary protected status, or TPS, a policy in effect since 1990. TPS allowed vetted migrants to live and work in the US legally if they could not return to their home country because of natural disasters, armed conflicts, or other extraordinary conditions. The ruling allows the Trump administration to begin mass deportations and affects about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians who are living in the US under TPS.

[Interviewer]

One thing that throughout this conversation you've really highlighted is that on the one hand, there are these forces of xenophobia, of racism that are driving a lot of the story. On the other hand, there are very real concerns over the system being at capacity, over a fear of not being in control of people coming into the country. I'm curious beyond sort of the top line explanations that I think we sometimes get that this is just bigotry, this is racism. What do you see as the explanation in terms of things like economic fears, job loss Community security that may be motivating the present moment of anti immigrant sentiment. And perhaps these other moments that we've seen in the country's history, if somebody

[Lawrence Wu]

was being well paid, they wouldn't resent that the person working alongside him was a foreign national that had just arrived here. And I see this a lot in these things. We have real policy issues, things that need to be addressed. But by playing this divisive rhetoric, instead of actually helping the public understand and contemplate, well, how do we want to fix this? What do we think are good ideas?

[Interviewer]

It's blaming people rather than institutions.

[Lawrence Wu]

Yes. And policymakers.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

Historically, we have tended to villainize immigrants, but we don't always recognize the way that we have contributed to their displacement and the ways that we profit from their migration. I do a lot of research in presidential libraries and it has always struck me that, you know, when I look at these memos that are sent from one office to the next and they're discussing immigration issues or they're discussing, they're discussing foreign policy, there's never a recognition of how a particular economic or military policy might contribute to displacement.

[Lawrence Wu]

We think about these things as just immigration. And it's all interconnected

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

from the 1980s on its concern with unauthorized migration that seems to most dictate our immigration policies.

[Lawrence Wu]

And this gets to what the issue is today. From my perspective, immigration is not a problem to be solved. It's a phenomena to be managed. So whenever there is a perception or a reality that we have lost control, people are upset.

[Maria Cristina Garcia]

I think moving forward, as we continue worldwide to see more displacement, and especially displacement caused by climate change, I think the nations certainly in this region need to work together to address why people are moving.

[Lawrence Wu]

It's all about what system we have overall. What are our priorities? What are our top concerns? What should our immigration pathways be? Is it just our national interests, our self interest of workers with needed skills and our relatives that are abroad? Do we want to have a track for climate change? It could be because we feel a more moral responsibility. Do we feel that refugees are another important track and we need to have pathways for them? And then if we're going to do this, how many are we talking about each year? How much give and take? I don't think we can answer these questions about refugees and asylees and forced migrants in a vacuum without looking holistically at, at our immigration system, our capacity to absorb people and what the process should be.

[Rund Abdelfatah]

That's it for this week's show. I'm Rund Abdelfatah and you've been listening to Throughline for many PR this episode was produced by me, Ramtin Adaplooi and

[Lawrence Wu]

Lawrence Wu, Julie Kane, Anya Steinberg, Casey

[Rund Abdelfatah]

Miner, Ristina Kim, Devin Kadayama, Sarah Wyman, Irene Noguchi. Thanks to Jaya, Ramji Nogales, Kathleen Arnold, Jasmine Romero, Liana Simstrom, Julia Redpath, Johannes Durgi, Nadia Lanci, Edith Chapin and Colin Campbell. Voiceover work in this episode was done by Casey Minor, Devin Katayama and Ellis Oriola. Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Voelkel. This episode was mixed by Gilly Moon. Our music was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which includes Naveed Marvi, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani and we would love to hear from you. Send us a voicemail to 872-8805 and leave your name where you're from and say the line you're listening to Throughline from NPR and tell us what you think of the show and if you have any questions that you'd love us to answer. We might even feature your voicemail in a future episode. That number again is 872-588-8805. Thanks for listening.

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