• Asylum is an immigration status for people who are in danger of persecution, severe harm, or death if they return to their country of origin. It is also an international right; the United States signed an international treaty in 1968 agreeing to uphold the right to asylum.
• Every way to enter the United States - such as with a visa, with parole, asking to enter at a border, or crossing a border "without inspection" - is a valid way to claim asylum. There is no way of entering the US that makes someone ineligible for asylum.
• Many people who are seeking asylum have been held in immigration detention. Having been in detention does not make someone a criminal, and does not mean they did something wrong or illegal. 
• Receiving a decision on an asylum claim usually takes between 3 and 8 years. While asylum seekers are waiting for a decision on their case, they are generally not eligible for federal benefits like social security, unemployment, housing assistance, and food stamps.
• An asylum applicant cannot apply for a work permit until 150 days after their asylum application is filed. Without a work permit, a person is not eligible to work for a US employer. 
• When a person starts working with an asylum-seeker work permit, they pay taxes on their income, including paying into Social Security. Many asylum-seekers will pay income taxes for over a decade, supporting programs they are not eligible to use themselves. 
• By the time they arrive, most people seeking asylum have spent all of their resources getting to the US. The journey is costly, dangerous, and traumatizing. Many people start their life in the United States completely from scratch.

Why does WMASN call people seeking asylum "friends"?

When media and politicians talk about our neighbors, they often reduce them to their immigration history with terms like "migrant," "undocumented," or even really nasty words like "illegal." When we meet someone new in our community, we care about who they are: a parent picking their kid up from school, the person in line ahead of us at the grocery store, the person sitting behind us in church, the restaurant owner handing us our dinner. That person might have an immigration process going on, just like the person next to them might have a process in tax court, but that's not necessarily the most important thing about them. A welcoming community sees people as friends first.