It would be kinda interesting if somebody actually implemented a law like this: all citizens without free speech get automatic asylum. You'd have half of the world turning up on your doorstep within a month.
More seriously, it's also interesting when you think back to how asylum worked during the cold war. Migrants, even explicit economic migrants, were encouraged to emigrate from communist countries (cuba, east germany, etc), while asylum seekers in imminent threat of torture and death (say, 70's era Iranians, 80's tamils, etc) were blocked.
This is a very shallow statement. Probably 99.99% of people fleeing the above-mentioned communist countries were detained at border and sent to camps with tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands being literally murdered while attempting to do so. Obviously the big difference in this case is the numbers of potential asylum seekers, not the origin.
"Probably 99.99% of people fleeing the above-mentioned communist countries"
As far as Czechoslovakia goes, the success rate was WAY beyond 1:10000, that is why people still tried.
About 400 people were killed on our militarized border with West Germany and Austria. The # of people who succeeded was actually over 10 thousand, especially in the earliest phase (1948-51), when the security of the border was far from perfect.
You could also escape in less dramatic fashion, for example by going to Yugoslavia (a non-aligned country) for a vacation and defecting.
Of course, whoever was caught and their families would face serious repercussions. In the Stalinist era, Gulag, after it, less pronounced bullying (loss of jobs, forbidden from higher education, forcibly moved to rural regions).
More seriously, it's also interesting when you think back to how asylum worked during the cold war. Migrants, even explicit economic migrants, were encouraged to emigrate from communist countries (cuba, east germany, etc), while asylum seekers in imminent threat of torture and death (say, 70's era Iranians, 80's tamils, etc) were blocked.