The
Guardian headline is jarring:
Hillary Clinton: Europe must curb immigration to stop rightwing populists (Patrick Wintour 11/22/2018). I happened to be in Vienna on Friday, and the large news screen in the subway stations were showing a German version of it with Hillary's photo. I doubt anyone took it as a pro-immigrant statement on her part.
Here are some German-language headlines on the story: Clinton:
Europa muss Einwanderung in den Griff bekommen Kurier;
Hillary Clinton wirbt für Begrenzung der Einwanderung in Europa Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitung;
Clinton fordert striktere europäische Flüchtlingspolitik Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung;
Hillary Clinton empfiehlt Europa Begrenzung der Einwanderung Der Standard.
Some further English headlines:
Hillary Clinton Says Europe Must ‘Get a Handle’ on Migration to Thwart Populism New York Times;
Hillary Clinton urges Europe to curb migration to stop populists Politico;
Hillary Clinton tells Europe to curb immigration and stop populism CNBC
I'm going into some detail on this because it's important to the immigration issue and the fight against xenophobic anti-democracy parties and because of what it tells us about Hillary Clinton and her brand of Third Way centrist politics. Which, within the US Democratic Party, is not at all unique.
These headlines are obviously helpful to the xenophobes and damaging to pro-immigration advocates in Europe. But I also learned long ago to be careful about taking reporting on the Clintons at the face value of headlines. The historical journalistic malpractice by even the "quality" American media was well documented by Gene Lyons in
Fools for Scandal (1996) and by him and Joe Conason in
The Hunting of the President (2000). A trend that nevertheless continues. (
Joe Conason, still debunking Clinton pseudoscandals 11/19/2017) But, first:
European Immigration and rightwing populism
Europe faces longterm immigration problems which can be legitimately described as a chronic crisis. The huge influx of immigrants in 2015 was an acute phase, the shock of which has been widely exploited by rightwing demagogues like Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to further their project of undermining liberal democratic institutions and the rule of law.
Recently, Orbán made a propaganda point by announcing Hungary will not sign a diplomatically significant but legally completely non-binding UN Global Compact for Migration scheduled to be signed in December at a summit meeting in Morocco. He was following the lead of like-minded authoritarian Donald Trump, who withdrew the US from the pact in December 2017. (Leonid Bershidsky,
Immigration Politics Aren’t Really About Immigration Bloombereg Opinion 11/20/2018)
Austria's baby-faced Chancellor Sebastian Kurz jumped on the bandwagon in November, while Austria holds the current six-month rotating Presidency of the EU's European Council. And several countries have since followed up with their own rejection: Poland, Israel, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria. Australia has just joined the anti-Migration Pact group. (Joseph Berlinger,
Australia joins US, Israel in refusing to sign UN migration pact CNN 11/31/2018) And notable last-minute controversies on signing the Migration Pact have arisen in Germany, Italy, Croatia, and Slovenia. (Fabian Urech et al,
Diese Länder lehnen den Uno-Migrationspakt ab – oder zögern mit der Zustimmung Neue Zürcher Zeitung 22.11.2018)
But that's only a diplomatic manifestation of the real effects of the xenophobic wave headed by far right parties and groups in Europe. As we see in the United States, anti-immigration measures are often brutal for those affected and too often deliberately cruel. The Trump Administration's policy, supposedly abandoned for now, of kidnapping the children of asylum-seekers arriving from Mexico, is a prime examaple of performative cruelty for its own sake.
Another is the let-them-drown-in-the-sea policies that have been adopted by Italy's current government, formally a coalition with the left-populist Five Stars movement as senior partner and the far-right populist Lega as junior partner. When it comes to immigration policy, though, the Lega's Matteo Salvini is clearly calling the shots.
Once Libya became a failed state in the wake of the US-French-British military intervention of 2011, that country has become a major route for refugees trying to make it to Europe from the Middle East and Africa. The people-smugglers (
Schlepper is the German equivalent of the Mexican
coyote). The
Schleppers often send the refugees into the Mediterranean Sea in flimsy and overcrowded boats.
The international
Law of the Sea requires capable vessels who encounter ships in danger of sinking to act to rescue the people on the endangered vessel. Humanitarian missions have played a singificant role in rescuing such refugees coming from Libya. But anti-immigrant governments like Italy have been trying to interfere with such missions. Even Austria's Chancellor Babyface has joined that chorus. (
Kurz setzt Schlepper und Hilfs-NGOs faktisch gleich Der Standard/APA 14.10.2018)
But Italy's Salvini in his role as Interior Minister has also taken the step of refusing to allow ships carrying rescued people to dock in Italy. This is an active discouragement to ship captains to follow the Law of the Sea and basic human decency in rescue situations. In practice, it really is a let-them-drown-in-the-sea policy.
And a report in the 17.11.2018 issue of
Der Spiegel ("Tödliche Befehle"; English version: Raphael Thelen,
Are Ships in the Med Ignoring Refugees in Distress? Spiegel International 11/21/2018) indicates that it is having that effect. It includes a report on the US Navy ship
Trenton:
When they first saw the USNS Trenton, waves were already crashing into their inflatable boat out on the open sea. The 117 people onboard had crammed into the 12-meter (40-foot) vessel to escape the torture in the Libyan camps and to continue their journey to Europe. Now, they ripped off their T-shirts and began waving them and crying for help. Among them was Josef, a Nigerian man whose name we changed for this story. On this Tuesday, June 12, 2018, he was hoping for a new life in Italy, both for himself and his pregnant girlfriend.
But the USNS Trenton, a 103-meter, high-speed, twin-hull catamaran outfitted with a helicopter and surveillance equipment, did not turn toward the distressed migrant ship, but away. And soon, the U.S. Navy vessel disappeared over the horizon.
The boat began to sink, and people started to drown. "About half an hour later, a helicopter appeared and then three motorboats sent from the
Trenton showed up. They pulled 41 people out of the water. All the others had drowned, including Josef's girlfriend and their unborn child. A total of 76 people lost their lives that day."
Thelen's article notes that it is "unclear" why the
Trenton "did not provide assistance earlier." It may have been a legitimate judgment call by the Trenton officers. But the practical consequence was just as fatal. And, "Sicilian investigators are looking into the matter. A formal inquiry into whether the Navy failed to render assistance in an emergency had not yet been initiated." The US Navy, unsurprisingly, claimed they did nothing wrong.
And the effect of Salvini's anti-immigrant policy puts even more pressure on commercial craft who site boats in distress. Thelen quotes Jana Ciernioch of the NGO SOS Mediterranée saying that she "believes trade ships don't provide assistance because they are wary of spending days looking for a port of call now that Europe has closed its ports to survivors."
(For regularly updated information on refugees to Europe, see:
UNHCR Operational Portal Refugee Situations.)
What Hillary Said
Hillary's immigration headlines followed on a series of interviews
The Guardian did with three center-left political figures: Britain's Tony Blair, Italy's Matteo Renzi, and Hillary. Unlike Blair and Renzi, Hillary recently enjoyed a major political success: winning the popular vote in the 2016 US Presidential election by a margin of three million or so. Even though America's 18th-century Electoral College gave the Presidency to the disgraceful Donald Trump, her popular victory gives her opionions current political weight. And she could run for the Presidency againt in 2020.
Not surprisingly, what she said in the interview as quoted in the article cited above was more nuanced than the headlines:
“I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message – ‘we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support’ – because if we don’t deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic.” ...
Clinton urged forces opposed to rightwing populism in Europe and the US not to neglect the concerns about race and identity issues that she says were behind her losing key votes in 2016. She accused Trump of exploiting the issue in the election contest – and in office.
“The use of immigrants as a political device and as a symbol of government gone wrong, of attacks on one’s heritage, one’s identity, one’s national unity has been very much exploited by the current administration here,” she said.
“There are solutions to migration that do not require clamping down on the press, on your political opponents and trying to suborn the judiciary, or seeking financial and political help from Russia to support your political parties and movements.”
Brexit, described by Clinton as the biggest act of national economic self-harm in modern history, “was largely about immigration”, she said.
Unfortunately, this is classic ”Third Way“ centrism. And some of the Social Democrats, including the SPÖ in Austria, are taking similar positions.
But this kind of posturing is the opposite of helpful for people in EU countries trying to get a realistic, pragmatic, and humanly decent immigration policy and to counter rightwing nationalism. EU countries need immigrants as much as the US.
It‘s doubly odd because she‘s also quoted in that piece being very blunt about how she thinks Trump voters just want to be told what to do. If she’s saying that, why can‘t she say that xenophobes need to take their heads out of their rear ends?
Her description here of authoritarian voters is fairly lead-footed. (I.e., supporters of rightwing populism have "a psychological as much as political yearning to be told what to do, and where to go, and how to live and have their press basically stifled and so be given one version of reality.") Which raises the further question: If she‘s saying stuff like this, why did she walk back her ”deplorables“ comment in 2016? She could have followed up the ”deplorables“ remarkt by responding to criticism with talking about some of the white supremacists and woman-haters backing Trump.
On the other hand, the excerpts from the interview reported in this article give a better picture of her critique of Trump's politics and its enablers, although it doesn't include further comments about immigration: Patrick Wintour in New York,
The US media must 'get smarter' to tackle Trump, says Hillary Clinton Guardian 11/23/2018.
And another
Guardian article gives some additional comments of hers on US immigration that provide at least more context (Patrick Wintour,
Clinton, Blair, Renzi: why we lost, and how to fight back 11/22/2018):
Clinton articulated a position that she felt Democrats should adopt on immigration in the US, where there are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, as Trump exploits fear of migrants to inflame his political base.
Democrats, she said, must never stoop to treating migrants cruelly. “You deport the bad actors, you deport the criminals, you deport people who have some other kind of threat to our national security. People who have been here for a long time, you have a cut-off point and after that point, they have to learn English, they have to pay taxes, they have to follow the law, they have to wait in line, and you have a process.
“For people who then keep coming, you turn them back, unless they qualify for asylum, which has been in our law for hundreds of years.” [my emphasis]
After the Guardian excerpts were published, Hillary tried to walk them back a bit (Dareh Gregorian,
Hillary Clinton calls for reform, 'not open borders,' in explaining European migration remarks NBC News 11/24/2018.
She struck a more immigrant-friendly tone in a Tweetstring:
And she links to the text of an October 9 speech of hers on the subject,
Remarks at Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, in which she says:
Of course, security and the rule of law must be upheld. Of course, nations have a right and duty to control their borders, in concert with their neighbors. But we can’t let fear or bias force us to give up the values that have made our democracies both great and good.
Our goal should be to build societies that are secure and welcoming, where everyone counts and everyone contributes – people who are newcomers to our lands and people who have lived in the same place for generations.
Which sounds pleasantly harmless. But her comments to the
Guardian were of a different nature. It's hard not to read her statements there as classic Clinton "triangulating" advice: take the immigration issue away from the rightwing populists by adopting their position on immigration.
Obama as President tried something like the same approach. The theory was, crack down on illegal immigration and show the Republicans that you're serious about controlling immigration. And then that will make the Republicans more willing to agree to a more reasonable comprehensive immigration reform. To say it didn't work out that way would be wildly understating the reality.
At this point, it's hard not to agree with Nesrine Malik's verdict on Hillary's immigration comments: "as a response to the right it is a proven failed strategy, a race to the bottom where populists will only benefit from the endorsement." (
Hillary Clinton’s chilling pragmatism gives the far right a free pass Guardian 11/23/2018)
Economist Robert Reich, Labor Secretary in the Clinton Administration, is also not impressed with Hillary's position on European immigration:
