4.2 Debate on Withdrawing from the Refugee Protocol

Affirmative Constructive

Imagine you are in charge of a lifeboat overloaded with passengers. Every additional person who climbs aboard threatens to capsize it and reduce the food supply even further. Your morality tells you that you should never deny entry and let a drowning person die, but you realize that never saying no means that all on board may suffer. When is it time for you to say no to “just one more”?

This is the reality of United States refugee policy under the 1967 Refugee Protocol. While the intent of ratifying the Protocol reflected humanitarian values, the recent surge in asylum applicants means that it is time for the US to be able to say no to more refugees. My position is not that it must say no, just that it must be able to say no. Therefore, I affirm the resolution: The United States should withdraw from the 1967 Refugee Protocol.

My value for this debate is utility, which prioritizes policies that generate the greatest good for the greatest number, subject to the limits of constitutional rights. I choose this value to govern international relations, even though within the United States we normally act with concern for human rights even if it the cost is very high. When a person is starving, we feed them; when they need shelter, we try to house them, when they suffer from an accident, we provide emergency medical care. But international relations is different, and we cannot treat everyone in the world the same way we treat everyone inside our boundaries. We need to be selfish and give ourselves the ability to say no when it will maximize the total utility of persons in the United States.

Contention 1: Gaining control over deportation would increase utility.

The 1967 Refugee Protocol prevents the U.S. from fully controlling its immigration policy. Anyone who enters the US legally can apply for asylum after they have entered, and under the Protocol we cannot return them to their country of origin if they have a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group or political opinion. This obligation exists because the US has ratified the 1967 Refugee Protocol and mandated compliance with its prohibitions against non-refoulement in the 1980 Refugee Act. If a coup takes place and suddenly hundreds of thousands of refugees are threatened with persecution, we cannot send any of them away without adjudicating their claims that they are entitled to asylum (Office of Refugee Resettlement 2022).

In 2023, the number of people claiming asylum in the United States was over 1.1 million, a number that has increased over six times from the number of people seeking asylum in 2021. Most of the applicants were from three countries that had recently experienced political instability: Venezuela, Cuba, and Colombia (Schofield and Yap 2024). These asylum applicants are entitled to remain in the US while their claims are processed, which can often take several years. Since there is not enough room to detain them, most are paroled into the US and given work authorization after six months. Many get lost because there is no good way of tracking where they are living, and thus they remain in the US indefinitely.

Because the obligation of non-refoulement is unlimited, the US is at the mercy of global political conditions. The more people who enter the US, the more who can apply for asylum. And as international instability increases, the US remains unable to remove the increasingly large numbers of people who are in the US due to problems in other countries. The US has to cut back on the admission of other immigrants from stable countries, leading to an imbalance of refugees from Spanish-speaking countries who have entered through the southern border. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 47.5% of US asylum applicants in 2023 came from just four Spanish-speaking countries: Venezuela, Columbia, Cuba, and Nicaragua. (Worlddata.org 2024). Because the US cannot expel any asylum applicant until after final adjudication of their claim, it is unable to achieve balance in its immigration policy. This hurts the utility of the US, which would benefit from being able to have more control over whom it admits for legal residence.

Contention 2: Reducing the costs of taking care of asylum applicants would increase utility.

There are two types of costs that have vastly increased due to the 2022-24 surge in unauthorized immigration. The first involves the cost of processing millions of asylum applicants through the immigration court system, which often involves a period of detention that may last indefinitely for those assessed as security risks. The more applicants, the higher the costs. There are also costs for asylum adjudicators, appeals units and immigration courts. If there was no right to apply for asylum, illegal immigrants could immediately be deported upon capture.

The second cost involves meeting the needs of asylum applicants while they remain in the US. As of 2023, there were over 2 million pending cases, and the average time to resolve one was four years (Kanno-Youngs 2023). The US is not so callous as to let them starve and deny them shelter. While federal funding has been limited, state and local governments often provide food, clothing, shelter and health care. Because New York City has a policy of providing shelter for all homeless people, over 210,000 migrants came to NYC between 2022 and 2024, many seeking to reside in the city’s homeless shelters (Donaldson 2024). Furthermore, the Supreme Court held in Plyler v. Doe (1982) that education must be provided for all primary and secondary school age children, even if they are in the US illegally (because it is not their fault and it is wrong to deny them education).

A 2022 study by the US Department of Health and Human Services found that the average amount of money spent per year by US governments between 2005-2019 was about $30 billion. It has clearly gone up since. The NYC Office of Management and Budget (2025) estimated the total cost of taking care of asylum seekers for the 2025 fiscal year will be $4.75 billion. Complying with the Refugee Act is very expensive and there is no way to prevent this burden from increasing unless the US withdraws from the Refugee Protocol.

Again, the resolution does not call for every person who faces persecution to be returned to their country of origin. But adopting the resolution would allow the US to place a reasonable limit on how many can apply. The US is by far the favorite place for people to seek asylum, but if it withdrew from the Protocol the demand would likely decrease.

Contention 3: Reducing applicants would reduce fraud and increase utility.

Because gaining asylum requires a showing that persecution is likely if an applicant is returned to his home country, there is a strong incentive for those applicants and their attorneys to submit false claims. If they have no well-founded fear, they just fabricate evidence, and there are law firms that assist them in doing so. FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr. said: “The elaborate deceptions allegedly created by the groups of attorneys and managers in this investigation are astounding.  As we allege, they told their clients to lie on asylum applications and under oath about being persecuted in their home countries, and they even created ghost-written blogs to bolster those false claims.” (U.S. Attorney’s Office 2021). The worst that can happen is that they will be deported, which is the same thing that would happen if they did not apply for asylum. So a high percentage of claims are fraudulent, and not all can be detected. Some inevitably slip through because the applicant tells a persuasive but unverifiable story and a sympathetic immigration judge grants them asylum.

There is no way to know how many people fraudulently gain asylum. But allowing fewer applicants means less fraud and less mistakes, which will increase utility.

To sum up, whether you want lots of immigrants or few–or none–US utility will be increased if the government can control who stays and who must go. Withdrawing from the Refugee Protocol will make this possible without violating the law.

Bibliography

Donaldson, Sahalie. 2024. “Following the Asylum Seeker Odyssey: A Timeline.” Cityandstateny.com.Following the asylum-seeker odyssey: a timeline – City & State New York

Ghernter, Robin, Suzanne Macartney and Meredith Dost. 2024. “The Fiscal Cost of Refugees and Asylees at the Federal State and Local Levels from 2005-2019.” US Department of Health and Human Services. The Fiscal Impact of Refugees and Asylees at the Federal, State, and Local Levels from 2005-2019 | ASPE.

Kanno-Youngs, Zolan. 2023. “Backlogged Courts and Years of Delay Await Many Migrants.” New York Times. May 13. Title 42 Ends, Swelling Immigration Case Backlog Amid Judge Shortage – The New York Times.

New York City Office of Management and Budget. 2025. “NYC’s Humanitarian Crisis Response.” Asylum Seeker Funding Tracker- OMB.

Office of Refugee Resettlement. 2022. “The Refugee Act.” The Refugee Act | The Administration for Children and Families.

Plyler v. Doe. 1982. 457 U.S. 202.

Schofield, Noah and Amanda Yap. 2024. “Asylees: 2023.” Office of Homeland Security Statistics. 2024_1002_ohss_asylees_fy2023.pdf.

U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York. 2021. “Attorneys and Managers of Fraudulent Asylum Scheme Charged in Manhattan Federal Court.” Southern District of New York | Attorneys And Managers Of Fraudulent Asylum Scheme Charged In Manhattan Federal Court | United States Department of Justice.

Worlddata.org. 2024. “Asylum Applications and Refugees in the United States of America.” Refugees in the United States of America.

Negative Constructive

Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, is a notorious prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration has been sending people deemed alien enemies. Inmates are housed in large cells with bunk beds but no blankets or pillows. They are only permitted to leave the cells for 30 minutes a day. The lights are always on, but no one is permitted to have reading material or visitors. The inmates heads are roughly shaved every few days (Meyer 2025).

CECOT is where political prisoners in El Salvador are confined. It is where the Trump administration has been deporting people under the Alien Enemies Act, sometimes by mistake. And it is a place where people who fled El Salvador to seek political asylum in the United States are likely to be sent. If the affirmative gets its way by withdrawing from the Refugee Protocol, it will become a destination for even more people deported from the United States even though they deserve to be granted asylum.

I oppose the resolution that the US should withdraw from the 1967 Refugee Protocol. My value is Kantian justice, defined as the protection of universal human rights. The US has opposed violations of universal human rights since it signed the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and it ratified the Refugee Protocol to confirm its commitment to non-refoulement. My position is that it should not surrender this value just because it experienced a surge in unauthorized immigrants that is now over.

During World War II, the US faced extensive criticism for not admitting more Jewish refugees who were fleeing Hitler. Ever since the end of World War II, the US has been a beacon for freedom for people facing persecution and ethnic cleansing. This is why the US signed the Refugee Protocol in 1967 and why it adopted the 1980 Refugee Act. Denying a duty not to return people to countries where they will be persecuted and possibly executed makes the US a collaborator with repressive regimes throughout the world. The US should not deny its moral leadership by dumping Kantian human rights protections just because it might be convenient for a short time. It should continue to care for human rights even though it may at times impose costs on taxpayers.

Contention 1: Poor administration caused the excess immigration, not the Refugee Protocol.

The affirmative began its speech by analogizing the current situation to an overcrowded lifeboat. But there is a difference between barring someone from entering the US, which is legal under the Refugee Protocol, and returning someone who has already entered the US to a country where they will be persecuted, which is illegal. The US has no obligation to admit refugees; it can choose which one it wants, which is what the affirmative is calling for. So if the border is tightened, there will be a manageable number of unauthorized aliens who are seeking asylum.

The US border was secured after COVID broke out, and the Biden administration continued health-related emergency procedures that allowed all illegal entrants to be returned without being given an opportunity to apply for asylum. The Biden administration knew in advance that the Center for Disease Control would declare an end to the COVID epidemic in May 2022, which would take away the section 42 authority that authorized these emergency procedures. It failed to adequately staff the southern border and paroled into the US hundreds of thousands of migrants even though they had no basis for seeking asylum. It also granted blanket withholding of deportation to people from numerous countries so that immigrants from those countries would not even need to apply for asylum. As a result, immigration skyrocketed in 2023, as 1.6 million people entered the US, the largest number since at least 2000 (Gramlich and Passel 2024). Meanwhile, the Biden administration allowed the backlog in asylum claims to increase, and there were over 2 million cases pending in 2023. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (2023) found that the Executive Office for Immigration Review was poorly managed and had lacked a strategic plan for over a decade.

Had the Biden administration done a competent job, there would be no need to require the US to withdraw from the Refugee Protocol. We can see this in how President Trump is handling immigration. In March 2025 there were 7181 people caught illegally entering the US across the southwest border, as opposed to a monthly average of 155,000 for the last four years (US Customs and Border Protection 2025). Illegal immigration is way down and were it not for the massive backlog in asylum applications, the problem would be well under control. The US has no reason to withdraw from the Refugee Protocol because the problem identified by the affirmative is already being solved.

Contention 2: It is wrong to return people to countries where they will be persecuted.

The non-refoulement standard established by the Refugee Protocol has become part of customary international law. This means it is binding on all countries, even if they are not signatories of the Refugee Protocol (Khaitan and Krishan 2022). Withdrawing from the Protocol does not make refoulement any more legal under international law; it is always wrong.

Kant would very much agree. He believed that moral actions required recognizing as duties universal principles that should guide all actions. Non-refoulement is one such principle, and it fulfills his maxim that people should be treated as ends, not means. Sending someone back to where they would be persecuted treats them as means to the government’s end of saving money. It is an obligation of all nations in the world community to prioritize the safety of refugees. The US should not discard the Kantian values that underlie its support of human rights throughout the world. If Kantian values apply, the resolution should be rejected.

Now let’s turn to the affirmative contentions. I argue that they fail under both Kantian justice and utilitarianism. First, the affirmative says the Protocol should be rejected because it takes away US control over its policies by forcing it to take in more refugees than it can handle. I argue that the problem was caused by lack of enforcement by the Biden administration, and that if Trump’s policies had been adopted in 2022 there never would have been such a problem. Furthermore, exactly what is the problem caused by not being able to deport people who deserve asylum? It doesn’t affect foreign policy. It may mean processing and welfare are more costly, but the US Constitution–part of the affirmative’s value–requires that detainees be given due process and prevented from dying while their claims are awaiting adjudication. Certainly tightening immigration enforcement so that no persecuted immigrant will be refouled to his home country meets the Kantian value standard.

Furthermore, Americans are very proud of the Statue of Liberty and Emma Lazarus’ poem that we are open to all seeking refuge. Americans gain utility knowing they saved people from persecution. When the US took in people from Cuba after Castro took power there was a big surge in utility. The same was also true in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and many Ukrainians were granted protection by the US. Giving up on a right to asylum will diminish the utility of Americans, who are willing to pay the costs for refugees to remain alive, regardless of what President Trump may think.

The second affirmative contention is that processing costs will be reduced if there are fewer applicants for asylum. I argue that you can achieve that without surrendering the Refugee Protocol. Since tighter enforcement can achieve the same gains to utility, the affirmative cannot win this issue on a utility standard. In fact, Trump is already instituting new processing rules that allow asylum to be denied in clear cases without holding an unnecessary hearing (Jordan 2025). This is also a utility win so again tighter enforcement is better than withdrawing from the Protocol.

Finally, people who get asylum or refugee status help the country. I’m familiar with the same Health and Human Services study you cite, and it also says that the amount of taxes paid by people granted asylum or refugee status contributed more in taxes between 2005 and 2019 than it cost to take care of them (Ghernter, Macartney and Dost 2024). During c/x you didn’t disagree that asylum applicants provide benefits to people in the US. So there’s another utility win that is also a win under Kantian standards.

Finally, you argued that there is a lot of fraud. But you cited no statistics about how much fraud, just a notice that some people had been indicted for asylum fraud. There are no reliable numbers on immigration fraud since the government doesn’t want to know and so it doesn’t keep track. So there is no proof on this issue and you can’t win without evidence of convictions–indictments don’t prove anything. But in any case, we both agree that the system of asylum should be improved, so I don’t disagree with you on this. My point is that if the fraud is fixed that takes away your reason for abandoning the Protocol, so your goal is achieved without having to do that. In short, there is no need to get rid of the Protocol, it is the wrong thing to do and it will not bring more utility than simply reforming the system.

Bibliography

Ghernter, Robin, Suzanne Macartney and Meredith Dost. 2024. “The Fiscal Cost of Refugees and Asylees at the Federal State and Local Levels from 2005-2019.” The Fiscal Impact of Refugees and Asylees at the Federal, State, and Local Levels from 2005-2019 | ASPE.

Gramlich, John and Jeffrey S. Passel. 2024. “U.S. Immigrant Population in 2023 Saw Largest Increase in More than 20 Years.” Pew Research Center. US immigrant population in 2023 saw largest increase since 2000 | Pew Research Center.

Jordan, Miriam. 2005. “Trump Administration Directs Judges to Deny Asylum Without Hearings.” New York Times. April 16. Trump Administration Directs Judges to Deny Asylum Without Hearings – The New York Times.

Khaitan, Pavitra and Jvalita Krishan. 2022. “The Obligation of Non-Refoulement and its Erga Omnes Partes Character.” Harvard International Law Journal. The Obligation of Non-Refoulement and Its Erga Omnes Partes Character | Harvard International Law Journal.

Meyer, Josh. 2025. “Shackles, Shock Troops, Windowless Cells: How Bad is Trump’s Favorite Salvadoran Prison?” USA Today. April 11. How bad is CECOT, Trump’s favorite Salvadoran prison?

US Customs and Border Protection. 2025. “Nationwide Encounters.” Nationwide Encounters | U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

U.S. Government Accountability Office. 2023. “US Immigration Courts See a Significant and Growing Backlog.” U.S. Immigration Courts See a Significant and Growing Backlog | U.S. GAO.

Affirmative Rebuttal

The negative said during cross-examination that the US was very big on human rights in the 1960s and 1970s. Some believe the criticism of the USSR’s human rights record helped accelerate the revolutions against Communist rule that took place a decade later. But that was a long time ago, and the US has abandoned its former human rights policies. It openly makes deals with major human rights violators like Russia and China without criticizing their records. In last year’s presidential debates the subject of human rights was never raised. Americans have gotten over this, they are skeptical of Kant’s Perpetual Peace, they want what’s best for the US and that’s it. Utilitarianism is their value, and that’s why they elected Donald Trump. The negative’s value is not what Americans want and you should apply the value of utility to resolve this debate.

Americans also thought that President Biden had a poor immigration policy, and it was one of the major reasons why they chose Trump over Biden. I agree with the negative that Trump is doing a better job closing US borders, but it can never be perfect. Imagine what could happen if Trump takes back the Panama Canal and makes it part of the US again. Hundreds of thousands of people from Central and South America will crowd into it and demand the right to apply for asylum. The US needs control over immigration and the negative didn’t dispute that, it admitted that unlimited asylum applications are costly, and that taking care of everyone while they wait for a decision involves costs that cannot be budgeted in advance.

The negative dropped my additional argument that the Refugee Protocol has prevented the US from optimally allocating grants of permanent residency because it has to deal with so many immigrants from Latin America. Most likely a better mix would generate more utility, especially since many of those seeking asylum are not well-educated or even English speakers. It would be better to control immigration by selecting the best from all over the world, and perhaps requiring that they have a certain level of educational attainment and English proficiency. There is no way the US can do this if it is at the mercy of global political forces, as it is under the Protocol.

My second contention is that taking care of asylum applicants is costly. The figures I cited from HHS are from before the Biden administration, and there is no full accounting of what was spent on the 2022-24 immigrant surge. But it was a lot, and a lot of this could have been avoided. As to the revenue generated from asylum applicants, they can’t even get work authorization for five months so all that time if they work it will be off the books with no taxes paid. Illegal immigration is not going to go away, and if foreigners know they have no right to stay in the US for several years while their cases are adjudicated they may not cross the border in the first place. Fewer unplanned immigrants is a net gain in utility.

My last argument is that fake asylum applications are a problem. There is no way to prove this because the government doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know because admitting this will make the administration look bad. The lack of proof does not mean the problem doesn’t exist, it just means that the government is unable to pay close attention because its immigration judges are so slammed. But there is enough episodic evidence to know that people have an incentive to cheat, that many cheaters win, and thus cheating will always be a problem.

The negative’s first contention is not accurate. The problem was not caused by a poorly-run asylum system, it was caused by people coming to the US to get asylum, and the Biden administration only made it worse. Trump has made improvements but he needs to put an end to the automatic right to asylum by withdrawing from the Refugee Protocol.

Finally, on to the negative’s claim that non-refoulement is customary international law and the US cannot escape its obligation by withdrawing from the Protocol. The easiest way to defeat customary international law is to destroy the custom, which is done by withdrawing from the Refugee Protocol. This may lead other countries to do so as well because they don’t want to attract the hundreds of thousands of immigrants that will emigrate there if the US changes its policy. So this is not an insuperable problem.

My last point is about what Kant would say. He believed in law and order and the power of the government. If the Refugee Protocol is no longer binding, then the US has the sovereignty to control its borders. He was not a believer in civil disobedience, or even uncivil disobedience. Obeying the law is a universal moral principle too and the US can insist that all immigrants abide by its laws, which means that denying asylum doesn’t violate Kantian values.

Negative Rebuttal/Summation

I find it distressing that the affirmative thinks support for human rights is outdated. Americans rebelled in 1776 because the British were denying the colonists their human rights, and the US has been open to millions of people fleeing religious, racial, and political persecution. While the record is not perfect, since the Second World War the US has been open to refugees from all over–and in 1967 the US embraced the principle of non-refoulement. There is no evidence that those who support Donald Trump want him to do away with this principle, not has he announced opposition to it. Not deporting people to places where they will likely be persecuted is a principle that reflects Americans’ Kantian views on life and death matters, much like the commitment to not allowing anyone to die for lack of emergency medical treatment. This Kantian value is alive and well and is the first voting issue in the debate: we should judge the resolution according to Kant’s principle of acting in accordance with universal law. And we know that non-refoulement is universal law because it is also customary international law.

The affirmative has given no evidence that Americans judge the right of asylum by cost calculations. We don’t ask whether refugees are smart or stupid, old or young, productive workers or invalids. This is not a utilitarian calculation, nor should it be. It is the right thing to do, and that is why we do it–out of duty to humanity, much as Kant said. And if you apply this value to the resolution, you will see that the negative has to win. The affirmative’s only argument against a Kantian standard is that Kant required adherence to law–but that doesn’t mean he would regard all laws as moral. Kant’s respect for every person means that individuals must be treated as ends in themselves, and deporting someone to a country where they likely face persecution is using them as means. So vote against the resolution based on the value of Kantian justice.

Even if you accept the affirmative’s argument that utility should govern this debate, the negative wins as well. Don’t be swayed by scare tactics such as US annexation of the Canal Zone to believe that the Refugee Protocol inhibits US policy. As I said before, the US is entitled to police its borders, and if those borders are in Panama, it should police those too. Whether or not you like President Trump there is no doubt that illegal immigration is down significantly since he took office, which means asylum claims will also go way down. The affirmative had no response to my point that dismissing meritless claims without a hearing will also accelerate control over immigration. There is no need to withdraw from the Refugee Protocol since the US has control over its borders–and its policies–now.

The second voting issue in this debate is cost. There is no evidence that asylum claims will overwhelm the system if proper border controls are instituted. The affirmative defined its value to include constitutional rights, which means that due process must be followed. The cost of all court proceedings, detention, food, shelter and medical care for people awaiting decisions is by definition acceptable to the affirmative according to its values. Yes, the system got out of hand, but it was not because of the Refugee Protocol, it was because of mismanagement by a frail, elderly President who wasn’t really supervising what was going on. Biden’s failure–and the GAO called it that–does not mean the Protocol harms US utility.

The contention about fraud is a non-issue. No system is perfect, and there is no reason to believe that the Trump administration will ignore immigration fraud. So this is an insignificant non-voting issue.

My last voting issue is American pride in the Statue of Liberty. Americans gain utility from being free–and offering this freedom to all who qualify. The affirmative seems to have missed this in the utility calculation. The proof is that there is no public demand to withdraw from the Refugee Protocol, as there would be if Americans opposed that Protocol. So this is a final point for the negative to win the debate under a utility standard.

Affirmative Summation 

The first voting issue in this debate is the value that should decide the resolution. Americans may like human rights, but today utility is way more important. Donald Trump represents the promotion of utility above all. Most Americans have no idea of Kant or what his beliefs are, and those who do likely associate him with not telling lies rather than defending non-refoulement, a word that did not exist in his time. The negative hasn’t given you a good reason to believe that Americans are more Kantian than utilitarian, so the debate should be decided under the utilitarian value.

The second voting issue is the disutility caused by the lack of control that the US has over its deportation policy. There is no dispute that there are over 2 million people awaiting adjudication of their asylum claims, which most are going to lose. The US is saddled with taking care of them for many more years. Furthermore, the negative has said nothing about the point I made in my first speech that the US can still grant asylum if it withdraws from the Protocol–but on its own terms. Is it fair that most of those who get asylum are from Latin America? Shouldn’t all nationalities be represented more equally? Why give priority to whomever happens to live nearby? Give the US control over immigration and utility will increase.

I agree that Trump’s policies have decreased illegal border crossings, but all the problems will not be solved by walls or soldiers on the border. Every person who flies in on a tourist visa is a potential asylum applicant, and we will hopefully never stop tourism. The US needs the flexibility it will have if the Refugee Protocol is no longer binding. And the negative did not respond to my argument that withdrawing from it will make it less a part of customary international law because that’s how international law works.

The negative’s position comes down to arguing that things are not that bad. But the negative has given you no reason to believe that things might get worse again. Remember how it was in 2023 in New York, with homeless immigrants everywhere in midtown Manhattan? That could happen again if Trump leaves office. Withdrawing from the Refugee Protocol gives the US the chance to decide who will be granted asylum on the merits, not on the basis of whomever does a better job of faking their claim to asylum. American first means an America free from unnecessary international constraints, so support the resolution because it will increase overall utility in the US and that’s what really matters in this debate.