Sorry, no. My stance has been identical to what it was 20+ years ago: if you don't have a border, pretty soon you don't have a country.

Which is why it's a good thing we have a border. All these people being arrested and detained for processing before being released for later adjudication of their claims are evidence that we have a border. It's a very different thing to claim that "if you have a border, but allow people access to judicial hearings on their cases, pretty soon you don't have a country."

And you've been quoting the textbook at me this entire time without acknowledging once that people game systems in real life.

Of course there can, and will, be some people who game systems. Any system.

But if asylees consisted predominantly of people gaming the system, they'd be losing a lot more of their cases. People game legal systems all the time, using an array of procedural tricks and claims....but whenever those people end up getting to an actual decision, they always lose. Because, again, they're gaming the system, not presenting legitimate claims.

Asylee claimants, though, don't always lose. They win their cases - a lot. Far more than would ever happen if most of them were gaming the system.

That's what you won't acknowledge, Dope - not only that people legitimately claim asylum in real life, but that most of the people that have been claiming asylum have legitimate and colorable claims. They don't always win, but so many of them do win that on the whole, the population can't be filled up with people gaming the system. These are, for the most part, legitimately people with a valid argument for claiming asylum in the U.S.