Short term? Hire those judges and speed up the process. What's in it for the right? Less time for migrant to earn money, analysis shows higher chance of passing if you are represented by counsel. Don't give 'em a chance to earn enough to pay counsel, less pass. Right is happier.

I'm not sure that's enough to get the right to support this. Which is why it hasn't happened.

The right believes that immigration is strongly affected by pull factors - even among asylees. They generally believe that if you make things horrible for asylees - even if you make them unnecessarily horrible for asylees - you'll get fewer of them. As Jeh Johnson put it in the quote upthread:

"JOHNSON: Yes, [the Trump] administration believes fervently that a deterrent message, or “consequence delivery,” as they refer to it, is the principal way to reduce illegal immigration. We want to make things so terrible for you that you would never think of coming here. But no deterrent message can overcome the desire to flee a burning building. That’s why we have to address the underlying causes."

So even if there's an argument that an expedited hearing process might result in fewer successful applications, immigration hawks believe you'd still end up with more immigrants than if you force them to endure a years-long delay, because more people would make the journey and apply. Even though the delay imposes enormous pain on the communities these asylees end up living in, it's worth it to reduce the number of approved asylum applications.