Allocating time in asylum systems: a dilemma between efficacy and equal treatment

Abstract The right to seek asylum is meant to offer protection to those suffering from persecution. Currently, numerous countries face severe delays in granting and adjudicating this right. This paper theorizes from the US asylum system, where a backlog of over 2.2 million cases poses the following dilemma: ensure an equal and fair process for asylum seekers, despite it likely leading to waiting periods that can reach several years, or implement efficiency policies to offer protection to the largest number of refugees possible, even when practitioners have deemed them a violation of asylum seekers’ equal rights to fair proceedings. Using insights gathered in in-depth interviews and participant observation, this paper explores this dilemma between efficacy and equal treatment and analyzes the moral costs of opting for one over the other. Even though this dilemma cannot be fully resolved, I offer pathways to mitigate it, with a focus on need-based and social membership considerations. Beyond furthering an effort in political theory to think normatively about time, taking this dilemma seriously forces us to re-evaluate how, as political communities, we want to grant the humanitarian protection we have signed up to provide.