The de facto situation in a worryingly large portion of people involved in debate about these topics is that it's not humanised to them, because it's at arm's length and they don't see it happen or feel any effect from it. It's no different to why seeing video footage of some atrocity is far more shocking than reading about it in a paper. That's why stuff like the OP and the link I posted is important - it's the next closest thing to shoving someone there themselves.
Think of the OP as a laywer dogfooding the judicial system he helps operate.
As an aside, there was a series on TV here a while ago called "Go Back to Where You Came From" [1]. It took a bunch of people, including some prominent anti-asylum political commentators and actually took them over to Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, the Congo, etc. and showed them first-hand what life is like for the people fleeing these places. Unsurprisingly, their reaction to it in person was markedly different to their reaction to it when they're sitting in an office at home reading about it in a paper.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Back_To_Where_You_Came_From
This argument is wrong. Let me rephrase it to make that more evident.
>We're dealing with humans, so it sort of by definition of the term requires [we treat them well].
or maybe
>We're dealing with humans, so it sort of by definition of the term requires [we don't reduce them to a statistic].
It clearly does not follow by definition.
>is far more shocking than
>their reaction to it in person was markedly different to their reaction
Yes. But is that better?