For those of us who are here legally, any time we file a court case, we pay filing fees, and sometimes if the case doesn't go well, court costs, too.

Illegals, though, are exempt from this process, having the freedom to burden our court system with their years-long claims to asylum plus multiple appeals stretching over years in meritless asylum cases that aren't over until the migrant wins.

President Trump's big beautiful bill, just passed in the final House vote, puts a stop to this. Anyone filing for asylum is going to have to pay filing fees, same as legal immigrants have to pay their much higher processing fees, and same as ordinary citizens have to pay their court filing fees any time they initiate a case.

According to CBS News:

The legislation includes more than $46.5 billion for border wall construction and related expenses, $45 billion to expand detention capacity for immigrants in custody and about $30 billion in funding for hiring, training and other resources for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

It also includes a minimum $100 fee for those seeking asylum, down from the $1,000 fee outlined in the initial House bill. The Senate parliamentarian ruled out the $1,000 fee for anyone applying for asylum. 

Yes, the original idea, overruled by the Senate parliamentarian, was to make the amount closer to what the court costs are, at $1,000. And sure, it would be a good idea to penalize those throwing junk cases to clog up the courts and prevent them from dealing with real asylum cases.

But $100 is still a good start in disincentivizing junk asylum cases. As most would-be asylees aren't fleeing persecution, the cost of being unable to fool the judge has just gotten higher.

Asylum has been abused for years by illegals, with millions trying their hand at it because they have nothing to lose by doing so. Not surprisingly, since the Biden administration and its vast funding of NGOs to coach migrants on what to claim, honest or not, asylum applications have skyrocketed, as if the whole world is undergoing a wave of repression instead of gotten richer. According to TRAC, of Syracuse University, some 3.7 million illegals have asylum cases on file.

In the recent past, some 90% of the cases have been thrown out. The TRAC document says 68% get waved through now, with the easiest admission coming from Rhode Island and the toughest rate of admission from Montana.

Asylum law was put into place as it is because presumably the asylees have just escaped with their lives with the North Korean secret police hot on their tail and don't have money.

But this is nonsense, given that most come from certified democracies with sharply rising GDPs, and most are not the poorest people in their countries, having tens of thousands of dollars to pay smugglers for entry into the U.S. and money to travel through multiple countries.

Zero risk, huge reward, not the least of which can bring the right to work in the interim, and if all goes well, U.S. citizenship status for their kids born here, a vast banquet of social welfare benefits, affirmative action privileges, and a path to citizenship which can lead to a coveted U.S. passport for the freedom to travel back and forth to the country one has supposedly fled in sheer mortal terror.

It's all to be had cost-free as long as you can find yourself a roundheeled leftist in the judge's chair, who will wave you through. And if you can't, no worries. You will owe the courts nothing for trying, and until recently, you could ignore your final removal orders with impunity.

Any surprise so many apply, claiming untold calamities?

Now, making a claim will require some skin in the game. And a work permit will cost, too.

Most know that asylum is a crapshoot, mainly dependent on how leftist your judge is. If illegal immigrants lose based on how meritless their asylum cases are, they lose their $100, and will have to wait many years to apply again.

That should do as much as anything to reduce the numbers of junk asylum cases inundating U.S. courts, as will the big beautiful bill's increased court personnel and enforcement officers.

That's what we voted for.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License