This is actually a brilliant idea. No asylum applications should be accepted at the border or after crossing. This creates terrible incentives for illegal border crossings, inhuman exploitation of migrants by cartels, trafficking, abuse, detention facilities. This can all be done away with by moving the application away from the border and into the digital sphere. This is a cheap, intelligent, and humane solution that should be applauded. All that’s needed now is to remove “the port of entry” concept from use altogether in what concerns asylum or immigration.
The app is the first step in the right direction. Now it’s time for the next step of either abolishing these in-person appointments altogether or moving them to embassies in the countries of origin. If you are really into these interviews, do them remotely. Zoom, Skype, Whatsapp, whatever.
I see people on social media bitching about this already but their brains are clouded by partisan concerns instead of focusing on solving the problem.
Clarissa's Blog 
This is once again about class.
Let’s talk about the “asylum” angle from a completely different class point of view.
Economic citizenship programmes come with long forms full of details you must get absolutely right.
You’ll spend a few days going over the thing even after you’ve completed it just so you’re sure there are no procedural or information screw-ups, and you may even do so with your immigration firm’s help.
But there isn’t an interview for most of these, and they’ll determine whether you’re accepted based on what’s in the application, including apostilled documents such as your police record (which mainly should be an absence of one).
You pay the submission fees and immigration firm fees, and upon acceptance you transfer the rest of the required government fees.
Within a few months to a lot more than a few months, you eventually get your shiny new Pokemon.
(Still loving that phrase of Ed Snowden’s, BTW.)
What’s the total cost then?
On the low end, about $125k, and in the middle, about $500k.
The high end, which would include the US, can cost up as much as a $10M+ asset transfer, depending on immigration visa class and which programme you’re entering.
Even the slightly less high end countries in Europe can cost $2M+ for this type of thing, and the participants in these programmes aren’t so much economic citizenship programmes as much as they are orientated around independent business immigrants.
As for entry in the countries where I’ve done this, you get a 24 hour free entry pass anyway upon arrival, and so you only have to get your passport stamped at one of the entry points if you’re staying longer. This is mostly de jure acceptance and you can get 30 days without much hassle on the immigrations side.
You’ll do this until you have your shiny new Pokemon, after which the entry consists solely of customs and related tax questions.
This is actually the important part of the exchange to these countries since many of them operate with low to no income taxes, only VAT, import duties, and various stamp taxes for property and legal documents.
Until they phase out the customs duties, I prefer not to see the entry points eliminated because that will inevitably mean a steep rise in VAT which will provide a further shock to already small economies that were convinced to shred them on behalf of The Global Rona Narrative.
Most of these countries do the import duties sanely, as in they don’t assess customs duty on things that they don’t make, but they still charge VAT.
VAT on a new laptop can be substantial enough as it is, with some of these countries charging in excess of the UK VAT 20p rate. (Realising this only sets them back, a few countries have set the VAT rate for tech products to zero.)
As for overstaying a visa during the process, usually you run out the clock somewhere else, but usually people in this situation are asked to travel onward for a while in a nice way rather than being arrested for overstaying. (Again, it’s about class.)
Bermuda has a relatively new programme where for a few hundred USD you get a year’s independent traveller and worker visa that does not render you liable to Bermuda taxes for anything you’re doing outside Bermuda.
It’s convenient for splitting time between Florida, certain Caricom countries, and points in Europe, especially when you’re still waiting on completion of another residence.
Just don’t get too worked up about the costs of imports, including the price of orange juice. 🙂
BTW, I have no fucking idea what the “national anthem” is in two of these countries, but since I’m not legally allowed to vote (and wouldn’t anyway), it’s not really such a big deal for me.
They got what they wanted, we got what we wanted, etc.
You do know that the e-visa programmes of several countries are entirely online now?
Australia’s like that now, although I prefer to avoid jackboot medical fascism.
But why not model the asylum process on already working e-visa programmes?
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Good post, Clarissa! Agreed with everything that you wrote here.
Also, as a side note, I think that people who need asylum but can’t get it in the US/Canada/West should have the option of getting asylum in more stable and safer Third World countries. It would still be better than staying put, at least in a lot of cases.
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He is also going to start deporting Venezuelans, Hatians, Cubans, Nicaraguans en mass:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/title-42-block-nicaraguans-cubans-haitians-rcna64418
A bit late, but I’m glad he’s taking action. Most of these are economic migrants, not real asylum seekers. He is also opening legal pathways for migration, since their labor is badly needed.
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