The 1951 convention for asylum was written to assuage post war guilt. It was not written and would not have been written for a world where mass transit has become commonplace.
It is no longer fit for purpose, you only have to look at the co-signatories,
http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/505187992.pdf
many of whom are the countries people are fleeing from!
The whole of the mode and scale of international migration has changed post war. It's a bit like the fact that any Commonwealth citizen had the right to come to the UK in the fifties which was quickly changed with the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 as soon as numbers started exercising their 'right'.
As Hobbes wrote in Leviathan, for many on this planet life is 'continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'.
Through UN intervention and Overseas Aid we ought to and do try to improve matters but it's a bit like rough sleepers who often have chaotic lifestyles and in many cases drink and/or drug problems. I try to do my bit to alleviate their problem but would be somewhat foolish to invite them all to live in my house with all the problems they would bring with them.
