Immigration and multiculturalism

Sovereignty begins with the ability to decide who enters a country and under what conditions. Europe needs secure borders, a serious debate about asylum and migration, and the confidence to discuss the effects of mass migration without treating public concern as illegitimate.

Across Europe, the issue of mass migration is almost enough to bring the political class to its knees. Time and again, European political elites have ignored the repeat popular demand for a controlled approach to migration. Instead, the same tired clichés are endlessly repeated: ‘migration boosts the economy’, ‘those who want border controls are racist’, ‘we have a responsibility to the less fortunate’, or ‘there is nothing that can be done because of international agreements’. Yet, in the past few years, these excuses have lost all their credibility.

The damaging effects of mass migration are now clear to see across Europe. Amid an enormous influx of newcomers, often from very different cultures, the social fabric is fraying. Services are overstretched, many neighbourhoods have become more dangerous, our countries no longer feel like our homes. Most damagingly, mass illegal migration has undermined the foundations of the rule of law, importing into our midst countless people who are, by definition, criminals.

Driving these trends has been a disastrous acceptance by European elites of the ideology of multiculturalism. This ideology manifests in different ways across the continent, but a core component has been a shared desire to demonise the idea that European cultures are more important than the cultures of those who arrive. In fact, for many proponents of mass migration, the transformation of European culture was precisely the point – migration was a way of challenging the so-called ‘backwardness’ of the European masses. This is a form of cultural suicide – and until our confidence in our culture is restored, all attempts to either limit or undo the damage of mass migration will flounder.

The repeated rejections of the mass migration fantasies of our political elites has, remarkably, not prompted any serious soul-searching. Instead, we see piecemeal efforts to promise tougher borders and a more serious approach to ‘returns’. Under pressure from the political Right, the mainstream have begun to concede that tougher action is required on Migration.

But we can be certain that there is no serious change of mind among the political centre. Those who presided over the problem are not going to be the ones to fix it. This is made obvious by the fact that dealing with the problem and consequences of mass migration will require more than piecemeal reform – it will require a complete overhaul of the legal and institutional architecture that governs Europe. Both EU law and the complex web of treaties and international obligations will need to be fundamentally reformed – currently, they prevent both serious action on securing borders and serious actions on deportations. The architecture of Human Rights established in the wake of the Second World War is no longer fit for purpose – it has resulted in a grotesque situation where the ‘rights’ of foreign rapists and murderers are considered above the rights of citizens of European countries.

FSI Europe is committed to driving a serious and far-reaching debate about what must be done to restore border security and cultural confidence to Europe, and how to respond to the unprecedented situation where large numbers of people are in Europe who have no right to be here. Furthermore, we will publish studies and analysis on the root causes of the migration problem – ranging from the difficult decisions regarding Europe’s Human Rights framework to the need to recover cultural confidence.