Nearly one million foreign nationals flocked to US for asylum in 2023, shattering all-time record

Nearly one million foreign nationals applied for asylum in the United States in fiscal year 2023, showcasing how dramatic the immigration crisis has become under the Biden-Harris administration, according to federal data.

There was a record-setting total of 945,370 asylum applications filed in fiscal year 2023, according to a report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Not only were these the highest numbers in recorded history, but the report confirmed how applications in both categories of asylum — affirmative and defensive — nearly doubled in one single year under the Biden-Harris administration.

Affirmative asylum applicants are largely defined as non-citizens who initiated their asylum application with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Foreign nationals who request asylum before an immigration judge during removal proceedings are considered defensive applicants — these applicants typically include illegal migrants and other non-citizens who are in violation of their status.

There were 456,750 affirmative asylum applications in 2023, the highest on record and nearly doubling from the 241,280 affirmative asylum case filings lodged the year before, according to DHS. In 2023, 488,620 defensive asylum applications were filed, the most ever recorded and almost doubling the 260,830 filed in 2022.

The DHS report also unveiled how initiatives championed under the Biden-Harris administration have resulted in explosive growth in asylum applications for certain nationalities.

There were less than 15,000 affirmative and defensive asylum applications lodged by Venezuelan nationals in fiscal year 2021, according to the report. That number skyrocketed to 173,190 in fiscal year 2023. Similar trends were also seen in Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Haitian applicants during this same time frame.

These four nationality groups are included in the CHNV program, a parole initiative launched by the White House that has allowed hundreds of thousands of them to fly into the U.S. The CHNV program, which has been plagued with fraud, has so far paroled roughly half a million foreign nationals into the U.S. since it launched in January 2023, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The Biden-Harris administration has also helped streamline the asylum application process by expanding the role of the CBP One app, which allows foreign nationals to apply for asylum on a daily basis outside of the U.S.

Border Patrol agents have encountered more than seven million illegal migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border since the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration, according to the latest CBP data. While an executive order handed down earlier this year has recently dwindled the number of illegal entries along the southern border, the backlog of cases currently pending in immigration courtrooms has already reached record levels, causing immense strain for federal immigration staffers attempting to process the crisis.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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