There are some basic facts about immigration in the EU that parties of the left, center, and (the pro-democracy) right have to find ways to inject into the conversation. Following are some of the key ones.
The European Union is based on what are called the Four Freedoms: freedom of movement for goods, services, capital, and people. The kind of combined economy the EU has can’t really function with a healthy dose of all four. How the euro currency is constructed and the (in my view) demented “debt brake” that says EU countries can have no more debt than 60% of their GDP are perpetual problems – but those don’t have to do with the free movement of people. (The free movement for people across borders is actually regulated by what is known as the Schengen system that includes non-EU countries like Switzerland. The first Schengen country which a person enters is the one responsible for checking passports.)
The politicians, of course, have to devise their own talking points for dealing with xenophobic demagogy. But talking points have to be combined with practical, reality-based policies. A few bullet-points on this:
• Xenophobia lives on lies and anecdotes: politicians call out the lies and provide a real-world context refuting them.
• Ending the free movement of people among EU countries would basically wreck the EU common market.
• The current EU “Dublin system” by which asylum-seekers are supposed to be processed by the country of entry has long since broken down and has stuck Greece and Italy with large refugee camps than neither handle well. It needs to be replaced by a required systematic cooperation throughout the EU. Bitching about how our country needs to be able to “control its borders” won’t solve any actual problem.
• Anyone who talks about making immigration physically harder and more dangerous in order to stop immigrants from being exploited by smugglers is blowing smoke. The main effect is to make to attempts to enter the EU more expensive and more deadly. The EU borders are already the deadliest in the world. People who are calling for tougher police or military measures to reduce refugee entry are pretty much consciously calling for more deaths and abuse.
• The third-country solutions, like the now-abandoned British scheme to ship all asylum seekers to Rwanda, or the current EU agreement with Tunisia to hold refugees that and process their European asylum claims, are basically scams to let politicians pretend they are doing something to keep the foreigners out. (This is not to say that any and all such third-party outsourcing is bogus. The EU-Türkiye agreement of 2016 was an example of how that can work reasonably well; but even that eventually became more-or-l ess a scam because the EU failed to follow it up with a more permanent solution.)
• Human rights matter, and they are part of the rule of law. And every EU country is responsible for maintaining the rule of law.
• The EU has to have significant immigration. The birth rates in the EU are below the replacement rate. And for the foreseeable future, maintaining European economies will require more workers that current birth rates don’t provide.
• Strong economies are a magnet for immigration. Western members of the EU attract immigrants from eastern ones. Europe attracts immigrants from outside the EU, both highly-skilled and unskilled.
• Immigration is not easy. And absorbing refugees is also a challenge. And, yes, that requires some amount of public investment for the receiving countries.
• All immigrants and refugees are people and some of them will commit crimes. The better integration can function, the less likely it will be that immigrants turn to criminal activity. In the EU and the US, crime rates among immigrants are generally lower than among native citizens.
• And, yes, all that includes adequate support of government programs, including schools and health insurance. They should be managed well by the government. But there will always be somebody who find it satisfying to bitch and moan about “welfare loafers” no matter what.
• “Help on the spot” is a classic politician’s magi-thinking notion when it refers to cutting down external immigration and asylum-seeking by promoting economic development in the countries now producing lots of refugees. (Short-term assistance in particular crisis moment is a different thing.), At best, promoting develop in poorer countries is a decades-long solution, not an immediate one. And, in any case, the most significant form of development aid that stimulates local economies are cash transfers the immigrants in the EU send to their families in both Global South countries and eastern European EU countries.
• “Help on the spot” is a classic politician’s magi-thinking notion when it refers to cutting down external immigration and asylum-seeking by promoting economic development in the countries now producing lots of refugees. (Short-term assistance in particular crisis moment is a different thing.), At best, promoting develop in poorer countries is a decades-long solution, not an immediate one. And, in any case, the most significant form of development aid that stimulates local economies are cash transfers the immigrants in the EU send to their families in both Global South countries and eastern European EU countries.
• Finally, “open borders” is basically a bogeyman slogan, because no significant political trend actually advocates it. Within the EU, open borders within the Union is an essential part of the construction of the EU, as noted above.
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