"The United States does not grant asylum in its diplomatic premises abroad. Under U.S. law, the United States considers asylum only for aliens who are physically present in the United States."

So I guess it's understandable that some people might believe they have to be physically present in the United States to be apply for asylum

False.

"To obtain asylum through the affirmative asylum process you must be physically present in the United States. You may apply for asylum status regardless of how you arrived in the United States or your current immigration status."

"A defensive application for asylum occurs when you request asylum as a defense against removal from the U.S. For asylum processing to be defensive, you must be in removal proceedings in immigration court with the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)."

https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum/asylum/ob...

Political asylum is for someone already in the United States, and protects an individual from removal to a country of feared persecution.

In either case the problem is people entering the country illegally versus legally and how to handle them in a way that doesn't create a queue of 600,000+ asylum seekers (which is what we have now). Think about that number given that I'm sure many of you know what limits we put on the number of legal immigrants each year.

For those who may argue for open borders I recommend studying the field of cultural pluralism. We're talking about a risk versus reward scenario where the risk is the existing culture being required to accommodate (replaced by) the incoming culture rather than the incoming culture assimilating to the existing culture and both changing at a manageable/stable rate. This is a function of two things most notably, the desire to assimilate to the culture and fit in, and the rate at which newcomers are allowed. The studies have shown it takes on average six years for a person who wants to assimilate to the culture to do so completely (this is from the field of cultural pluralism studies). From other studies about tipping points I can say that at most 25% can be allowed because that's all that's needed for a major shift and displacement of an existing culture, and that would be the number of people that are a part of a culture versus total immigrants (so unassimilated must remain below 25% at any given time).

Make of that you will, but as far as I can tell those are the major variables and numbers that need to be carefully considered and measured when it comes to the diversity, qualifications, and numbers of those we choose to allow emigrate legally and the criteria for the limitations we and other nations implement and control through the law. The reality is without significantly affecting an existing culture, meaning changing it at a rate faster than the resident population can accommodate reasonably without causing widespread problems/disruption for them or those coming here.