This is GPS, the Global Public Square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and

around the world. I'm Farid Zakaria coming to you live from New York. Today on the

show, North Korea and Iran trump radically different approaches to his two biggest nuclear

problems. A friendly meet and greet in the DMZ with Kin as words of war fly back and

forth with Tehran. I will talk to the Iranian ambassador to the UN and with a great panel.

But first, here's my take. Given President Trump's mean-spirited and often bigoted attitudes

on immigration, it pains me to say this, but he is right that the United States faces

a crisis with its asylum system. Democrats might hope that the out-of-control situation

at the southern border undermines Trump's image among his base as a tough guy who can tackle

immigration, but they should be careful. It could actually work to the President's advantage.

Since 2014, the flow of asylum seekers into the United States has skyrocketed. Last year,

immigration courts received 162,000 asylum claims, a 240% increase from 2014. The result

is a staggering backlog with more than 300,000 asylum cases pending and the average immigration

case has been pending for more than 700 days. It's also clear that the rules surrounding

asylum are vague, lacks, and being gained. The initial step for many asylum seekers is

to convince officers that they have a credible fear of persecution in their home countries,

and about 75% meet that criteria. Some applicants for asylum have suspiciously similar stories

using identical phrases. Many simply use the system to enter the US and then melt into

the shadows, or gain a work permit while their application is pending.

Asylum is meant to be granted to a very small number of people in extreme circumstances,

not as a substitute for the process of immigration itself. Yet the two have gotten mixed up.

As the Atlantic's David from has pointed out, the idea of a right to asylum is a relatively

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