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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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The goal of asylum law was largely to protect specific individuals who had specific threats against their lives, like dissidents from Authoritarian regimes.

This is incorrect. The 1951 Refugee Convention (which national asylum laws implement) was designed around two paradigm scenarios:

  1. Regularising the status of people who had fled the fighting in WW2 and couldn't go home because their home country had ceased to exist or the political situation meant they were no longer welcome there. This affected millions of people, but people at the time assumed that it was a one-off.
  2. "Never again" the scenario where Jews trying to flee Nazi Germany couldn't because no country would take them.

In the Cold War era asylum was mostly used by political dissidents, but the system was originally designed around the needs of large groups of people fleeing war and/or democide. It is true that it specifically wasn't designed for people fleeing the kind of general chaos you see in places like pre-Bukele El Salvador.

In any case, the problem is that the system set up by the 1951 Convention has failed, and the sane anti-immigrant right (i.e. Meloni or Marine le Pen, not Trump or Marion Marechal) needs to (and probably will) start talking about what the replacement for it should look like. From my perspective it would be even better if the liberal centre outflanked them by having this conversation first. This is another item on my "effortpost needed when work calms down" list inspired by the UK election campaign.

Jews trying to fell Nazi Germany

"flee", surely.

Oops - edited.