It would be a serious mistake to deny that a large part of the European population, especially in those countries with decades of experience in welcoming immigrants, is experiencing a movement of public opinion demanding that their governments impose greater restrictions on their immigration policies, if not simply the closure of borders and the expulsion of asylum seekers.
It is not a question of going into the multiple causes that have led to this situation, but of noting that the rejection movements are translating into the growth of populist parties, on the left and right, a phenomenon that traditional political forces do not seem capable of neutralising based on the principles that have made the European Union, despite its defects, the exciting project of freedom and progress that its founders conceived.
On the contrary, in the wake of the election results, governments such as those of Germany, the Netherlands, France and Sweden, not to mention the non-EU governments of the United Kingdom and the United States, have announced measures to restrict immigration, including notably the closure of borders, not only external ones, and the tightening of asylum conditions, the granting of residency or the right to family reunification. In many cases, it must be said in passing, these are legal provisions that were already contemplated in the respective national legislations, but which a misguided humanitarianism turned into a dead letter, leading to the current situation.
On the other hand, the migration phenomenon cannot be separated from the geopolitical upheavals that have shaken the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia in the last two decades, in which some of the Western powers have not been absent. Of course, it is undeniable that the European Union is obliged to design a migration policy that regulates migration flows and, as far as possible, promotes a culture of integration, but this cannot be done under the pressure of populist movements that in too many cases are not only based on fear of foreigners, especially those who come from Islamic societies or with values that are antithetical to Western culture, of Judeo-Christian origin, but, and most seriously, on the rejection of the concept of a United Europe, without borders and an open market, which has profoundly changed its social and labour conditions.
Because quarantining principles such as free movement and equality of European citizens is giving a legal status to the same considerations that led to Brexit. Finally, the current problems affecting governments such as the German one or, without going any further, the Spanish one, do not relieve our leaders of the responsibility of facing an immigration policy that does not respond to electoral calculations or hysteria.
