EU Poised To Reverse Course on Migration

The European Union looks poised to curb the flood of migration that led President Trump to warn that the continent faces the “prospect of civilizational erasure.” Lawmakers in the EU parliament, amid rising pressure to tighten borders, today voted to move forward with plans to set up so-called return hubs for illegal immigrants. The hubs, which would be located outside Europe, mark an attempt to fix the asylum system abused by many migrants.The proposed hubs — in effect, detention facilities for illegals — are envisioned as a way to deter unauthorized migration, asserts a conservative French member of the EU parliament, Francois-Xavier Bellamy. The hubs would enable European nations to “guarantee this straightforward principle,” Mr. Bellamy says, that “if you come to Europe illegally, rest assured that you will not stay here.” This would mark progress for a continent on edge over migration.Until now, migrants whose asylum applications get rejected or who are found to be unauthorized to live in Europe, “are usually allowed to remain on its territory until they are deported,” reports the left-leaning International Rescue Committee. That gives illegal migrants an incentive to try to make the move to Europe. The EU’s commissioner for internal affairs and migration, Magnus Brunner, says the hubs “should enable simpler and faster returns.” Liberals are already grousing about the proposed hubs. The IRC warns that the return centers will cause migrants to be “uprooted from their communities,” with “families being torn apart,” and “people being held in prison-like conditions.” A German Green Party member in the EU parliament, Erik Marquardt, balked at making the bloc’s “deportation policies dependent on” the Alternative for Germany, whose “remigration fantasies” he decried.The left’s squeamishness about upholding Europe’s borders, though, helps to explain the recent rise of right-leaning parties in EU nations and in the superstate’s own parliament. Countries that have borne the brunt of the continent-wide migration crisis, including Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, and Holland, are among those pushing for the creation of the hubs, which are likely to be situated in Africa.Europe’s failure to control its borders is the product of decades of policy decisions most often made by liberal elites over the objections of majorities of the public. As our columnist Michael Barone points out, European “authorities seemed to regard any qualms about immigrants with unfamiliar customs” as a form of “bigotry.” Voters’ frustration with that condescension, Mr. Barone adds, “is threatening the hold of longstanding political parties.”EU parliamentary elections held in 2024 bolstered the standing of conservatives, helping to make the return hubs a possibility. The right’s rise is a cause for consternation on the left. Deutsche Welle reports that the legislation was drafted via consultations between conservative parties and what DW calls “far-right parties” like the Alternative for Germany. A French Green Party member of the EU parliament, Mélissa Camara, condemned this collaboration.“History will remember that the so-called moderate right-wing group sounded the death knell of what remained of the cordon sanitaire,” Ms. Camara lamented. That’s a reference to liberal attempts to shun rightist parties from Europe’s lawmaking process. Yet as Mr. Trump has cautioned, if the continent is to have a future consistent with its historic cultural identity, it will be essential to address the crisis posed by unchecked migration.

EU Poised To Reverse Course on Migration

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