If you
think Trump’s migration policies are extreme, look at the EU’s
As
anti-immigrant sentiment surges in Europe, under-threat leaders are embracing
formerly taboo approaches to their borders.
October 17,
2024 11:08 pm CET
By Nicholas
Vinocur
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-eu-migration-policy-viktor-orban-muslims-ban/
BRUSSELS —
While no European leader or bureaucrat has threatened to deport 20 million
people or ban Muslims — except, perhaps, former President Donald Trump’s
favorite European, Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán — the European Union and
Trump are closer on the issue of migration than words may suggest.
EU countries
have individually pushed to crack down on migration after substantial surges in
support for anti-immigrant parties in various European elections this year.
While they
mostly eschew the racist, xenophobic rhetoric Trump uses to describe
immigrants, in the cold, hard light of policy their positions are not all so
different. At a meeting in Brussels, EU leaders spent hours discussing migrant
processing centers, speedier deportations and “hybrid warfare” by hostile
powers using migrants to destabilize EU countries.
“A new wind
is blowing in Europe,” said the Dutch anti-Islam, anti-immigration populist
Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders in Brussels on Thursday after a meeting of
far-right leaders.
Migration
has been at the forefront for Europe’s politicians since 2015, when more than a
million migrants, many of them Syrians fleeing war, made their way to the bloc.
In the
ensuing decade, the EU collective has shifted from the “we can do it” stance of
former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to trying to shoo new arrivals away from
the EU border altogether. In 2023 fewer than 300,000 people made it to the
continent; this year the EU’s border agency, Frontex, estimates about 160,000
migrants have reached Europe.
In recent
months, nearly a dozen European countries have instituted some form of border
restrictions in an attempt to deter migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.
Poland this
month announced a temporary halt to processing asylum requests from migrants
arriving from neighboring Belarus, invoking a security threat. Germany’s Olaf
Scholz instituted border controls this summer to stop undocumented migrants
from crossing into Germany after a Syrian man stabbed eleven people, killing
three. Six other countries, including Italy, France and Austria, have
introduced border checks.
Some
analysts say if Trump were to return to the White House, it would put more wind
in the sails of those who have matched and mirrored his administration’s
ambitions on migration.
“Certainly,
many member states that have pushed for a restrictive approach to migration
will be watching the American elections very closely. This will give [EU
countries pushing for more restrictions] further bargaining chips to push for
their preferences both in the U.S. as well as in the EU,” said Alberto-Horst
Neidhardt, head of European migration and diversity at the European Policy
Centre.
Returns and
deportations
The vague
terminology around “return hubs” and “processing centers” mirrors Trump’s
“Migrant Protection Program.” The initiative, colloquially known as “Remain in
Mexico,” took effect in 2019 and forced tens of thousands of non-Mexican
migrants back across the U.S. border to Mexico to await migration decisions
there.
In a letter
to leaders this week, Ursula von der Leyen, head of the EU’s executive branch,
endorsed the idea of what she called “return hubs,” buildings to detain
migrants in non-EU countries. (Spain’s prime minister, a relatively lonely
voice on the matter, on Thursday rejected the idea after the EU leaders met.)
Italian
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has inaugurated “processing centers” in Albania
where people headed to Italy will be transported — echoing Australia’s policy
of sending asylum seekers to Papua New Guinea to have their claims processed.
Meanwhile,
France is pushing to change EU law to facilitate deportations to third
countries. And the EU already has thousands of kilometers of physical fencing
at its external borders — a setup that far exceeds Trump’s ballyhooed but
abortive border wall with Mexico.
Some experts
argue that the mainstreaming of hardline rhetoric is leading to policy changes
that favor Europe’s right.
“If you
listen to Orbán and Meloni at times and others like [France’s far-right leader
Marine] Le Pen over the years, the rhetoric has been as harsh and as virulent
as what we hear from politicians like Trump in the United States,” said Judith
Sunderland, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
“There is an
intent to make it sound like it’s legal, like it is in line with international
law.”
The policy
changes have similar aims to those of Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance:
Reducing the number of new arrivals and sending people back to their countries
of origin, even if those places are potentially unstable or unsafe.
“We have to
recognize the current solutions don’t work,” said one EU diplomat who was
granted anonymity to speak candidly about the conversation.
That is
something Trump and many EU leaders would agree on.
What’s in a
word?
The major
difference, though, is in style and tone. Europeans tend to tiptoe around
contentious issues.
Take the
d-word: “Deportations.”
For Trump,
who has vowed to deport between 15 and 20 million people from the U.S. if
re-elected in November, using the word “deportation” is a badge of honor.
“Under the
Trump administration, if you came in illegally, you were apprehended
immediately and you were deported,” the Republican presidential hopeful crowed
at a rally in July. “That’s why, to keep our family safe, the Republican
platform promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of
our country.”
For European
leaders and officials, though, the d-word (which is linked, for many in Europe,
to Nazi deportations to death camps during World War II) is almost taboo. The
bloc’s officials speak gingerly of “returns” or “return hubs” to describe the
enclosed camps or detention centers they’ve set up outside the EU.
And when it
comes to describing how migrants reach its borders, EU leaders tend to tread
carefully again.
While Trump
has no qualms about qualifying some migrants as “illegal” and decrying “illegal
immigration,” in the EU migration that doesn’t come via airports or other
official routes is officially described as “irregular.”
Hungarian
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is the one EU leader to buck the trend, doing away
with European niceties and fully embracing Trump-style rhetoric, and
straight-up villainizing migrants with his right-wing nationalist stance. The
strongman leader vowed earlier this month to bus migrants to Brussels, copying
a similar vow by Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who sent migrants in his state
to Martha’s Vineyard, a posh vacation spot in Massachusetts.
“I have been
chest-deep in the bloodbath of the migration debate for quite some time,” Orbán
recently told a press conference in Brussels, channeling Trump.
Forging
ahead
But it’s not
all smooth sailing for Europe’s migration hardliners — some leaders are facing
setbacks in real time.
This week,
Meloni proclaimed Italy’s migration policy “a model for Europe.” But on
Thursday, while she gathered with other European leaders in Brussels, her
offshore detention centers in Albania hit their first hurdle.
Four of the
16 migrants sent to Albania have already been put on a boat back to Italy
because they were children or were considered vulnerable (only male adults who
are not considered vulnerable can be taken to Albania after a screening at sea
under Italy’s own rules).
Opposition
groups and NGOs immediately called the project a failure.
“It will
have very real consequences on people around the world, potentially, because
those other countries look at what the EU is doing to them and say, well, you
know, why should we guarantee people’s rights?” said Sunderland from Human
Rights Watch.
The bigger
concern, for some critics, is that harsh rhetoric and measures on migration
will open the door to other illiberal policies.
“Migration
has really become a Trojan horse for conservative forces to then push an agenda
that goes beyond migration,” said the European Policy Centre’s Neidhardt.
Hannah
Roberts contributed reporting.
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