There’s really only one way but you’re probably not going to like it.
Let people apply for asylum from their home country, in person at a consulate/embassy or online/by post and have suitable resources in place to enable those applications to be processed in a fair, efficient and speedy manner.
If that is done, then I think there can be no real objection to immediate removal of anyone who arrives by small boat before making a claim.
Anything else will be ineffective. That may be because of the significant risk that the solution is successfully legally challenged and in the time between passing the legislation and it being tested in the Courts many will still feel it is worth the risk, particularly if they are already in Calais. Or it may be because it fails to remove the “pull factor” that draws applicants to Calais in the first place, as having a well-resourced application centre there would. In that instance, successful applicants would have a safer route but those who were unsuccessful would have little to lose by trying their luck on a boat as they are already there. That would potentially draw more to go to Calais.
If there’s a good option for applying without the danger and cost of making one’s way to Calais and getting on an unsafe small boat there might be more applicants, but I think the idea that anything but a small fraction of the numbers who could in theory apply would actually do so is fanciful. Most of those who get to Calais are in fact successful in claiming asylum. The vast majority of those living in war zones and repressive regimes actually want to stay and do in fact stay even when there are clear, safe options for doing so (eg the majority of Ukraine’s citizens did not flee). The largest proportion of those fleeing unsafe countries go to neighbouring countries rather than half-way across the world. Ultimately most want to return home as soon as they can.
Apart from being the only effective way of dealing with the issue of small boats, my suggestion would also, I think, reduce some of the problems of what happens when asylum seekers arrive. At a local level, at the rate of current arrivals, we end up with tens or hundreds a day needing to be housed together at once. If arrivals were dispersed more the need to be able to transfer from beach landing to accommodation goes. The same number as currently are successful in applying for asylum would instead arrive with the right to live and work rather than being for many months in the limbo of a processing centre.
Of course, it is possible that these practical points are irrelevant. It might be that it isn’t much about people arriving by the boat load at the mercy of traffickers. Maybe it is just that enough of us just don’t want any to come for any reason or by any means.
botzarelli 