Europe Takes a Page From Trump’s Migration Manual

When it comes to Europe’s migration crisis, is the Continent taking a page from the Trump administration? That’s the prospect posed by the European Union’s new push to tighten its border controls. Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is even mooting the “remigration” of nearly a million Syrian refugees admitted by one of his predecessors, Angela Merkel. Yet Spain’s socialist premier is bucking the trend, offering amnesty for some 500,000 illegals.“We have learnt the lessons of the past. And today, we are better equipped,” is how the EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, frames the superstate’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum, slated to come into force June 12. The pact augments the EU’s power to locate, apprehend, and expel illegal migrants, partly via the creation of new “return hubs” outside Europe’s borders. The new hubs could help curb abuses of Europe’s asylum rules.The EU’s new course on migration comes after years of frustration by voters over the Continent’s lax border policies. These gripes were largely ignored by the EU’s bien-pensant elites, who all too often dismissed such concerns as bigoted, our columnist Michael Barone has reported. The EU parliament elections of 2024 marked a turning point by ushering in a wave of conservative legislators. The new tougher policies offer accountability to Europe’s voters.The advent of the so-called return hubs, these columns have suggested, will serve in part as a deterrent to illegals who previously counted on being able to reside in Europe, and take advantage of its generous welfare provisions, while their asylum cases were pending. Now, says a conservative EU legislator, Francois-Xavier Bellamy, the hubs will enable the Continent to enforce the policy that “if you come to Europe illegally, rest assured that you will not stay here.”Liberal activists gripe about this new approach. Yet the EU solons are taking inspiration from, say, the tough policies adopted by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government at Rome. Plus, too, the stricter migration measures in the new EU pact are, Newsweek reports, “echoing enforcement approaches associated with the Trump’s administration’s mass deportation efforts of illegal immigrants.”Along these lines, Herr Merz made waves the other day when he “called for faster returns of Syrian refugees,” Deutsche Welle reported. During a visit to Berlin by Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the chancellor suggested that some 80 percent of Syrians living in Germany should make their way back home within the next few years. He stressed that “the emphasis should be on those who abuse hospitality or break the law,” per DW.It’s hard to gainsay the logic of Herr Merz’s proposal, especially since even Frau Merkel has conceded that her open-door policy toward Syrian refugees had gone too far and even caused chaos. “For some time, we didn’t have enough control,” Frau Merkel conceded. Yet Germany’s left pounced on the chancellor. A Green party legislator, Luise Amtsberg, condemned his remigration idea as “not only out of touch with reality, but cynical.” A member of the leftist Social Democratic Party, a coalition partner, for better or worse, in Herr Merz’s government, warned him not to raise “expectations that he may not be able to meet.” The socialists running Spain are taking this pro-migrant mentality to its extreme. Far from weighing a remigration effort there, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is planning a vast amnesty for more than half of the 840,000 illegals living in the country, Le Monde reports.The scale of Europe’s crisis is reflected by the fact that, as recently as 2017, there were but 107,000 illegals in Spain, Le Monde adds. Mr. Sanchez croons that “the West needs migrants,” while lawyers’ offices at Madrid are festooned with posters touting “mass legalization.” Yet measures like Spain’s are likely to fuel more of the illegal migration that irked Europe’s voters and prompted President Trump to warn of the Continent’s “civilizational erasure.”

Europe Takes a Page From Trump’s Migration Manual

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