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I think this dialog is entering some legal territory and I am not a lawyer and can only offer speculation. I’m sure a human rights lawyer can actually fill us in on the specifics here. So my speculation is as follows:

I was under the impression that if you cannot ask for asylum outside of a country’s border, and there are no legal ways for you to enter it (e.g. you need a visa but there is no way for you to acquire one since there is no embassy that will grant you one; or you don’t have a passport since your country’s government won’t issue you one), then you are not exactly committing a crime if you enter “illegally”.

I think you might be assuming that many (most?) asylum seekers are actually doing so under a false premise, and they have no grounds for the asylum application. I’m sure there are some for which this applies, but I doubt it is a sizable number. At least I would need to see some credible source before I would belief so.

I would speculate that by far the majority asylum seekers that are rejected their application and deported, are rejected on technical grounds, not because they applied under a false premise. If that is the case, the majority of refugees, even those that enter illegally, and are eventually rejected and deported, commit no crime in the process.




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