I think that would be better, though I think that could also potentially exacerbate rather than alleviate the other issues!

If you want to expand legal channels it can't all be premised on increasing border security, it actually has to be argued per se. I'm not saying that there aren't some reasons to do the former, but it's not a realistic political plan given the history of this issue in the US and elsewhere.

I wouldn't have much confidence this approach would work for very long for the US. We haven't even gotten to the maritime borders, really. But European policies have some pretty major problems (like in Libya) and while it's hard to prove a counterfactual, hasn't really stopped the far right here.

I agree, but this is the extent to which migration like this happens for exogenous reasons and even title 42 would not stop it enduringly. If you’re trying to come up with political solutions, everything in the western world since the end of the Cold War suggests you have to expect that.

Yes it really is. In the UK for instance the impacts of 2015/16 were rather modest. The UK has had new asylum acts continually from the early 90s, Germany had new laws post reunification, Yugoslavia was a big deal, etc. Lots of policy changes over many decades all aimed at reducing asylum seeking.

Well, it’s a bit more than no easy answers — it’s that this has been the main form of controversial migration to Europe for more than 30 years and after that long of governments continually hollowing out asylum, people are still coming and claiming it in numbers considered too high.

I think the issue is that it is often rather hard to discern the differences between these groups or draw form lines between them, which as long as you actually care about extending protection to the deserving (some don’t) will be a difficult barrier to operationalizing more scrutiny.

Honestly I do, though it would have been a somewhat different backlash.

FWIW in my migration politics class one assignment is for students to write a policy brief about whether the 51/67 framework should be replaced. They usually conclude that it’s best not to try because no one will agree what to replace it with.

At the end of the day -- and this is my point in criticizing most supposed "solutions" -- I think to a certain extent there is no substitute for actually making the case to voters that migration is good actually and it is in our interests at least to tolerate it, rather than suggesting the opposite.

I think the reasoning of this piece has a lot of issues but I think it does hint that the actual solution to irregularized asylum seeking etc. is, in great part, going to be more work migration. Which of course we all know is actually subject to similar political attacks.

Occasionally you hear of an ECHR-based decision that's iffy (e.g. can't send a Brazilian back to prison in Brazil because of prison conditions), but I don't think the UK is systematically different from other European countries. Aslo a good primer: www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

afaik most aren't in "city centers," many in marginal towns. The issue with tighter scrutiny is that decisions get overturned on appeal when it's revealed that the decision-making in the initial phase is poor - HO is overruled frequently. That actually adds to length of time in hotels, etc.

Yeah, the problem is that as long as you very tightly control asylum seekers, you have to put them somewhere, and alternatives are not that popular either. In that sense reducing the backlog is important.

we'll see if any are tempted though. the other thing is that I expect to hear a lot about this kind of thing from insurgent dems running in open seats for instance, even if no one responsible for passing this is directly involved

I don't know, I guess politically the important point is that Danish SDs can lose voters to their left over this and stay in government because in that political culture there is flexibility and a tradition of coalitions, whereas we cannot be sure that'll happen in the UK at all.