We can’t let migrants shop around for sanctuary

A summit to raise funds for refugees would do better to scrap our outdated asylum rules

A simple but misleading calculation nestles at the heart of tomorrow’s Syrian donor conference in London. If only a fraction of the £30 billion being spent building walls and fences across Europe was diverted to feeding, housing and schooling refugees in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, the migrant flow to our continent would recede. Their exiled lives would become more productive, in anticipation of the return of peace to Syria. European aid, say the grandees of the donor world, has never been so obviously justified by self-interest.

That is a dishonest argument. Not because peace is an impossible fantasy — it is surely reasonable to hope that the Alawites, Sunnis and Kurds, exhausted by war, will one day lay down their guns. No, the flaw lies