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Again, context being Europe... constantly? Continuously? In a great variety of ways? At the very least since 2015, the constant trend in European (at least continental) migration policy has been how to prevent the events of 2014-2015 happening again in the same way, and thus we got the 2016 EU-Turkey deal, 2020 Greek border crisis solved by EU-supported border closure and 2021 Lithuania/Poland border crisis solved the same way. If the powers that be were pursuing a policy of "as many immigrants as possible", they obviously wouldn't have done that.
United States has certainly taken in a lot of people fleeing religious or national oppression, even if it hasn't happened under formal refugee/asylum status, no?
It's not being kept from the public very well, I'm pretty sure anyone who has spent even a bit of time on immigration issues (which admittedly isn't even everyone politically oriented - as I said, not everyone simply considers immigration that big an issue) is aware of the costs of immigration, a drum the European nationalist parties keep banging on constantly. However, if your point for the maintenance of refugee/asylum system is the one I mentioned, ie the maintenance of the international human rights treaty framework, it follows that the costs alone are generally not a sufficient reason to stop doing so.
That's not true. They'd do it if they had no other choice, and had to wait for a better opportunity.
What they want to do is clear from messaging sent to the public, which is still: immigration good, and skepticism of it is racist.
So how is this supposed to be falsifiable then?
Literally the messaging sent to the public by EU is this:
Migration is context, you have to balance a bunch of stuff, the top message is that immigration must be managed - which by necessity means that the borders won't be open, which was the question being discussed.
Like I said, public messaging. What you quoted actually goes some way towards it, but what's missing for me is public awareness.
I'd say the top message is what actually reaches the public. I don't think, it's more than single-digits of voters who know the refugee crisis ended because they're paying Turkey to enforce their borders, or that there is a border wall in Poland and Lithuania. Then you also have the NGOs (which were specifically mentioned in this conversation), and last I heard from them about that, was that Polish border wall is racist.
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