The US asylum system is deeply flawed. But there are ways to fix it

Migrants in San Antonio, Texas, where two planeloads of mostly Venezuelan migrants got sent from Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Photograph: Jordan Vonderhaar/Reuters

In the United States, Asylum is a place on a map. Today, the roughly 1,000-person, predominantly white, scattered township sits quietly along the Susquehanna River, about 60 miles north-west of Scranton, Joe Biden’s birthplace.

But more than two centuries ago, Asylum hosted the crème de la crème of French society – displaced aristocrats, military officers, business owners, secular clergy – hoping to manifest another Paris in the Pennsylvania woods.