Europe has rejected President Trump’s strong warnings on unchecked immigration. But leaders across the continent are hearing increasing complaints from angry voters about open borders and illicit migration.
My name is Joseph Hammond, foreign correspondent for The Washington Times.
This is my Q&A on the state of Europe’s immigration debate.
What are some of the key issues that have ignited the immigration debate?
Certainly across the continent, there is a lot of concern about illicit migration, and I think that is playing out in a number of policies that have been enacted. Recently, we’ve seen two areas of concern. One is areas where governments are trying to put forward policies to allow them to deport asylum seekers, to deal with illegal migrants by having them processed in a third country, or to send them back to where they came from. For example, you have the one-in-one-out deal between France and the United Kingdom, which allows the United Kingdom to deal with some of the immigration flows we’re seeing of people attempting to cross the English Channel in small dinghies. And we also have, similarly, in Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Malone’s deal with Albania, where Albania will process tens of thousands of illegal migrants on behalf of the Italian government, serving as a staging area for that process to take place.
The other area where there’s a lot of policy debates and movement is tightening standards that allow naturalization and allow migrants to become full citizens of the European countries that they settle in. We’ve seen that in Denmark in recent months, and we see that, you know, in another country like France, where there is tightening of the path to citizenship and increased language requirements as well.
Is immigration seen as a national security issue in Europe?
What I think is interesting now is that there’s increasing concern that illegal migration is a national security issue in Europe. What’s interesting also is there’s not only concern about migrants coming to a country in Europe and potentially fostering or harboring terrorist groups. There’s also a concern that Russia is weaponizing migration to Europe as well. And you have seen migrants arriving into Europe cross the Eastern borders, whether that’s in Belarus or along the border between the European Union and Russia directly, and that this is an effort for Russia to destabilize Europe.
In fact, European Commissioner Magnus Brunner has warned this summer that Russia is weaponizing migration as part of a policy to destabilize Europe. So increasingly, the issues of immigration and national security are linked in the eyes of many policymakers and voters in Europe.
Watch the video for the full conversation.
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