The EU is waking up to the same immigration catastrophe as Britain
Why is it, people sometimes ask, that Britain struggles to deport illegal immigrants and foreign criminals when European countries appear to have no difficulty in doing so?
The answer is simple, for Britain is in fact not alone. All European countries face the same problem, because all European countries share similar geography, and the same legal and political constraints.
Just look at the numbers. In 2015, when the problem was known as “the Migration Crisis”, more than one million people crossed the Mediterranean to reach Europe. More than 800,000 travelled by sea from Turkey to Greece and on to other countries. But while politicians and commentators today talk less of a crisis, the statistics remain staggering.
Last year, 157,000 people arrived illegally in Italy, by boat. In France, 142,500 migrants claimed asylum, and the authorities held 47,000 in detention centres and overseas territories. In Germany, 329,000 migrants claimed asylum, and a further 124,000 were allowed to come because they were related to asylum seekers already there.
The numbers in Germany are particularly startling. They exclude Ukrainian refugees, of whom the country has welcomed more than one million since the Russian invasion nearly three years ago. Germany has around a million Syrians and nearly half a million Afghans living within its borders. Last year Berlin spent €48.2 billion on costs associated with migration – more in a year than it has spent supporting Ukraine since the start of the war.
Many migrants are denied their asylum claims, but European countries face the same obstacles in deporting them as in Britain. According to the European Commission, 440,600 migrants were ordered to leave the EU last year, but only 83,400 did so. The nationalities with the highest rates of return were Georgia, Albania, Turkey, Moldova and Serbia. The lowest were for Syria, Congo, Afghanistan, Guinea and Morocco. Many of those refused asylum in Europe cross the Channel and try their luck in Britain, where grant rates are higher.
Politicians across the Continent, pressured by challenger parties campaigning against mass immigration, are starting to realise that things cannot continue as they are. Ursula von der Leyen promises action from the Commission. Donald Tusk has demanded the right to suspend asylum altogether. Emmanuel Macron – never too shy to make a bombastic statement in contradiction to his policies – has declared, “we cannot embrace the misery of the world.”
The Netherlands is looking to strike an agreement with Uganda, in which rejected asylum seekers will be sent to Africa if they cannot be returned to their home country. Italy has an agreement that should allow it to send migrants for detention and processing in Albania. And politicians from countries including Denmark and Germany have proposed taking up Britain’s now-abandoned policy to send illegal immigrants to Rwanda. Even the Commission has indicated its interest in the principle of processing asylum claims offshore.
And yet European countries run into problems familiar to British politicians and immigration officials. On Friday, an Italian court ruled that twelve migrants held in Albania who had had their asylum applications denied must be returned to Italy, because it was impossible to recognise their countries of origin – Bangladesh and Egypt – as safe. The decision followed a ruling by the European Court of Justice, against Czechia, that said a country can only be considered safe if there is “never” any inhuman or degrading treatment at all in the whole of its territory. The ruling confirmed European governments can no longer “designate a portion of the territory of a third country as safe” and that “material conditions for such designation [must] be fulfilled for the entire territory.”
Critics of the administration of immigration law in Britain often ask, if France can ignore the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), why can’t we? It is true that the French legal system is more deferential to the executive than in Britain, where publicly-funded NGOs and claimant lawyers often run rings around the Home Office. But celebrated cases – such as when last year the French Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin ignored a Strasbourg ruling and deported an Islamist Uzbek anyway – often turn out to be more complicated. In this case, within a month, the Council of State ordered the Government to return the deportee to France without delay.
The truth is all Western countries are facing the same immigration pressures, and are finding the international treaties they signed seven decades ago are no longer fit for purpose. In America, not bound by anything like the ECHR, the numbers arriving have fallen as deportations have increased. But last year, immigration officials encountered more than two million migrants at the Mexico border, and the issue is prominent in the presidential election campaign. Australia, which turns back migrants at sea and sends those entering the country illegally to Nauru, a small Pacific island state, is the only Western country to have solved the problem.
And a serious problem it is. For countries without functioning borders cease to be countries. When the privileges of citizenship and legal residency are granted to anybody who enters a country illegally, the very concept of citizenship is damaged and will without change one day be destroyed altogether. Across Europe, rising sexual violence, knife and gun crime, and organised criminal activity like drug distribution and smuggling migrants are all connected to the spike in migration. With illegal migrants costing receiving states £400,000 each, net, city mayors and national leaders say services need to be cut and taxes must rise.
There is no cause to believe the crisis will burn itself out. There are 117 million displaced people and 43 million refugees worldwide. Hundreds of millions more could claim asylum in the West based on events in their home countries. Nobody believes all these people will head to Europe, but nobody believes the flow of migrants will suddenly stop without drastic change.
So drastic change is needed. The ECHR must go, and deportations of illegal immigrants must happen, at great scale. Civilisations unable to control their borders die – and ours is no exception.