The Right is Walking Into a Trap on Immigration

It is notoriously difficult to make predictions, especially about the future, but one thing that is beyond any doubt is that 2024 will be the year in which immigration continues its inexorable rise to the top of the political agenda.

Last year saw record numbers of illegal immigrants streaming through the southern border of the United States and persistently high numbers coming to the UK on small boats.

In Europe, in particular, we have continued to experience the inevitable consequences of decades of suicidal immigration policy play out on our streets. People who should not be here or who should have been deported are committing murders and rapes, as well as engaging in acts of terrorism that are becoming impossible to deny.

So much so that countries which once led from the front in the war on Europe’s borders have now been forced into drastic action. There is now an attempt to shut the barn doors within a respectable amount of time of the horses bolting.

Sweden is seeking to reduce the number of asylum seekers arriving in the country and is making it more difficult to obtain residence permits on humanitarian grounds. France has just passed sweeping legislation backed by both President Emmanuel Macron's centrist Renaissance party and Marine Le Pen's National Rally. The new law makes it more difficult for migrants to bring family members to France and delays their access to welfare benefits. Even Germany, which flung its doors open to more than a million refugees in 2015, is now talking tough on immigration.

All of these developments were undoubtedly accelerated by what we saw on the streets of our cities in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

Violent anti-Semitic and anti-Western rhetoric, the deliberate defacing of national monuments and overt territorial dominance displays which were essentially ignored by the British police have brought the consequences of mass migration into stark contrast for many, including those who had been attempting to ignore them for quite some time.

With elections both in Britain and the US looming later this year, the salience of immigration as a political issue will continue to grow. Already one can see the emboldened (or perhaps simply desperate) critics of mass migration, of which I certainly am one, speak more assertively about the need to deport foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers, and enforce the border. These are all good policies that are necessary and I am glad they are being advocated for.

There is, however, a brewing low resolution take on this issue, especially from some on the Right, that could well set back attempts to secure sensible immigration policy by decades.

The argument goes something like this: