The Senate’s most recent bipartisan immigration bill, which was packaged with foreign aid proposals and stalled out earlier this week, would have made our already draconian machine for detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers even more cruel. People who say they left their home countries because they were afraid of being killed or tortured would be processed more quickly, not because the old system is being expanded to deal with the backlog, but because a new system would be introduced — one in which asylum seekers would have fewer rights.

Under the proposed policy, the standard immigrants would have to meet to even earn the right to fuller consideration would be set much higher. And the cases would be processed not by the Department of Justice but by the Department of Homeland Security, where they would be subject to “a much faster review, often without attorneys or a deliberative process.” And a “shut-down” provision would mean that if too many undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers were encountering the Border Patrol at once, even this degraded level of due process would be thrown out the window.

It’s true enough that some people who claim asylum are actually economic migrants trying to use whatever loophole they can find to escape deportation. But the loss of due process rights would also mean that more people with legitimate asylum cases would be turned away. Nor should we grant that people who are “just” trying to escape desperate poverty should have the door slammed on them as quickly and harshly as possible.