Crossed Wires: Immigration — the hot and angry core that unites the global right

There were a few news items during the past week that reflected a much larger unfolding story. The first was the startling result of the German election in which the right-wing AfD party took 20% of the vote, twice the amount it received in 2021. The second was the acceleration of US President Donald Trump’s promised “mass deportations” of undocumented migrants in New Jersey and Chicago. Not unexpected, but it was a little distressing to watch shackled and forlorn young men being marched onto airplanes heading towards an unknown fate.

It is easy, and perhaps a little lazy, to assume that all “right-wing” movements are the same. The many issues that galvanise the right in the US are not the same as those that motivate right-wingers in the UK or Germany or even in Hungary. Consider Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the right-wing AfD in Germany, which attracted 20% of the vote. She is openly lesbian and has a wife of Sri Lankan descent. Such a person would not be welcome in Maga’s tent.

Matters of sexual preference also play little part in British or Italian or French right-wing politics. UK voters, both to the left and the right, have little appetite for US-style religious enthusiasm, let alone Southern-style Bible-thumping. In France, the pro-choice vs anti-abortion debate is not central to the right-wing National Rally, which also made astonishing gains in recent polls. Even nationalists like the Netherlands Prime Minister Geert Wilders of PVV look flaccid next to the brash jingoism of the Maga movement.

But then there is immigration. Everyone on the right waves that same red flag. If there is a single reliable rallying cry on the global right, it is an aggressive opposition to immigration, liberal refugee laws and, more specifically, multiculturalism. It is safe to say that the swing to the right that we’ve seen across numerous democracies has this issue as its nuclear core. More concerning, from town halls to the staid corridors of government, is that the language around immigration has turned from civil to vicious. We don’t want “those” people here — that is now the brutal message.

This is where it all gets a bit more complicated.

Trump recently announced his intent to launch a new visa programme that will allow anyone with $5-million to gain a quick path to US citizenship. It matters little that Trump cannot do this alone (visa programmes are in the wheelhouse of Congress), his influence is dominant enough to make it happen. There is also Elon Musk’s vigorous defence of special visa treatment for highly skilled foreign technologists.

This is the case not only in the US, but common around the world — many countries have clearly signposted back doors through which you can enter if you are rich or skilled. And there are some less visible ones, as in “You stand a better chance of making your home here if you are like us, if you share our values and are willing to assimilate”. The message is clear — we may not like your food or your God, your language or your skin colour, but if you have money or skills and the right attitude, we will try to look the other way.

Other aspirant immigrants are out of luck, whether they are fleeing horrors or just looking for a better life. It is common cause to claim that anti-immigrant rhetoric is discriminatory, bigoted or racist. Perhaps so, but the issue is more complex than that.

Culturally homogeneous 

Nation states have, historically, been born of conquest, colonialism and wars in the main, as well as the migration of peoples from one geography to another for reasons of stress like famine, disease or persecution. Moreover, in the wake of these upheavals, nation states have tended to become culturally homogeneous over the long term, bound by language or culture or religion and sometimes the happenstance of geography.

Socially integrative multiculturalism is a fairly new arrival in the modern world, driven by factors like mobility and liberalism and economic need — from America’s huddled masses of the 19th century to Switzerland’s successful governance of four language groups, to the sometimes bickering co-existence of French and English-speaking Canadians to the more recent and shaky cohabitation of multiple language groups, ethnicities and cultures in South Africa.

There are those who argue that the diversity of multiculturalism ultimately increases a nation’s vitality, but this view is now in retreat. In democracies around the world (with some notable exceptions like Spain), there has been an astonishing backlash, most visible in the US where the Democrats vastly underestimated the resistance to migrants crossing the country’s southern border. This became a particularly potent campaign issue, gleefully exploited by Trump.

The US is not alone. Take Germany, with its five million immigrants over 10 years, now representing more than 6% of the population, many from Syria and other Middle and Far Eastern shores. They bring with them cultural preferences extremely far from a Northern European sensibility, and many have little incentive to fully assimilate. Add a few violent incidents perpetrated by immigrants over the past few weeks and you have a tinderbox issue.

Or consider London, where “traditional” white citizens are now a minority and some more radical communities call for the imposition of sharia law (one can imagine a Church of England congegrant in parts of East London determinedly heading off to register for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK). Or France, where some immigrant neighbourhoods are considered no-go areas by French police.

Wading into a debate about the pros and cons of immigration, refugee assistance and multiculturalism is, of course, dangerous territory aflame with emotion. But the issue can be approached differently by asking a question about democracy. Does a government have the right, or even the moral obligation, to close its borders to immigrants and refugees at the request of a majority of its citizens? Is it okay, or even virtuous, to pass legislation to expel non-citizens considered undesirable if that is the prevailing wind among voters?

If you believe in democracy, the answer must, of course, be yes. Which is why it is happening in the US and will likely be repeated elsewhere as the world retreats from a more open-minded view of l’autre.

As governments start to fall to the right, with immigration “reform” as a major promise, we will be assailed with scenes of desperation and cruelty, hopes dashed, lives ruined, brutal repatriations and vulnerable people forced to reckon with uncertainty and worse.

That seems to be the will of the people, something which most of us have always held dear.

No matter, there is always the next election where pendulums often swing. DM

Steven Boykey Sidley is a professor of practice at JBS, University of Johannesburg, columnist-at-large for Daily Maverick and a partner at Bridge Capital. His new book “It’s Mine: How the Crypto Industry is Redefining Ownership” is published by Maverick451 in SA and Legend Times Group in the UK/EU, available now.