The US couldn’t control the size or composition of this population. Members of the administration decided to enshrine the principle of asylum in the statute, making it the first congressional act to mention the concept. The question was, how many people who’d been granted asylum could adjust their legal status each year to become permanent residents? Over the previous decade, roughly two thousand asylum seekers showed up on American soil each year; managing their numbers seemed doable. “Let’s be really expansive,” Meissner told her counterparts at the State Department. “We’ll double it, and
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