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Transnational Thursday for July 30, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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, but in this case is not necessary as asylum claim protects one from deportation, and nobody seems to want to deport them now.

It formalizes your presence in the country, entitles you to room and board, and like I said, would result in you getting relocated into the mainland free of charge.

entitles you to room and board

Does it? I am not sure how it is in Spain, in US asylum claim does not entitle you to anything per se, you have to be actually approved to qualify for benefits, and even those are term-limited. There are ways around it if you land in a blue state with a developed NGO industrial complex (which are all major blue states) but I wonder how that works in Spain.

Europe is pretty deranged about this, yes EU countries are legally required to provide room and board to anyone crying "asylum". Sometimes that's not as great as it sounds, as depending on the country and their attitude towards refugees, they can be put into some old barracks, far from any population center. However, Spain in particular is known to have used hotels to house refugees. What other benefits are stacked on top of that varies country by country, but even basic accommodations will sound like a pretty good deal for someone wanting to roll the dice on amnesty.

Yes, I know a lot of places spend significant resources to house and otherwise benefit the migrants. The question is whether they are doing it because they want to (this is frequently the case in the US - at least the wokes in the government do, but sometimes the wokes on the ground too) or because they are legally mandated to. If indeed EU laws dictate that, it's certainly not a sane or sustainable policy, but I see how the migrants would be eager to exploit it.

or because they are legally mandated to.

I am not a lawyer, but everything I read says that this is indeed the case. The article I linked references specific court cases that affirm this.