Storm warning on immigration in Europe

Pas-de-Calais, France, Sept. 3: illegal immigration kills again. The umpteenth sinking of a boat in the English Channel on the way to Britain claimed the lives of 12 Eritreans, including children. Rescuers managed to save 51 others. On Sunday, eight others died in the same conditions. Forty-five people have now died attempting these crossings since January, setting a record.

In 2021, there were 30, including 27 in the same shipwreck. Since 2018, 136,000 people have made the crossing using these boats of death, on which smugglers now shamelessly transport 70 to 80 people, in comparison to 30 to 40 people previously, into a country where immigration is increasingly being condemned by the far right.

Southport, England, July 29. No one has forgotten the tragedy. In a dance hall, someone savagely attacked children with a knife, killing three girls aged 6 to 9. A 17-year-old was arrested. The police had declared that his attack was not linked to terrorism and urged people to remain calm, but false information very quickly portrayed him on social media as an illegal migrant, an asylum seeker, a Muslim, who had arrived in the UK by boat. None of this was true.

As soon as he came to power, Prime Minister Keir Starmer reacted firmly against the far right and the assailants who had attacked Muslims, asylum seekers and police officers across the country. Following the latest shipwrecks in the English Channel, he announced that he would speed up the process regarding asylum applications, increase the deportations of illegal migrants and fight harder against smugglers.

The UK, where carrying firearms is strictly limited, is now experiencing an upsurge in knife-related violence, often involving young individuals. Since 2010, the number of incidents has increased by a third. This is similar to Germany.

Solingen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, Aug. 23. A Syrian refugee stabbed participants in a “festival of diversity,” killing three people and injuring several others. Before him, on June 2 in Mannheim, a 25-year-old extremist from Afghanistan stabbed a 29-year-old policeman to death. Each crime shook the country. In response, the government of Olaf Scholz pledged to restrict the carrying of knives in public and to speed up the deportation of illegal refugees.

As the triple homicide in Solingen occurred only a week before important regional elections in Saxony and Thuringia, Scholz announced a stricter policy on migration and had 28 Afghans deported to Kabul. This was a first since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. However, this did not reassure the public, which was up in arms regarding the government’s handling of immigration.

The Alternative for Germany won the elections in Thuringia, the first victory of its kind for the far right in the post-Second World War period. In Saxony, the same party was hot on the heels of the Christian Democrats. Scholz’s Social Democratic Party fell back and his allies collapsed. A serious setback for the chancellor, one year before the legislative elections of September 2025. The far right is attracting more and more German voters, thus becoming an earthquake in a country that claimed to be a proud advocate for welcoming migrants back in the days of Angela Merkel.

The Alternative for Germany won despite accusations of having dabbled in neo-Nazism. Earlier this year, 4 million citizens took to the streets following a resounding revelation: the party’s leaders had taken part in a secret meeting with neo-Nazis to discuss a plan for millions of immigrants and Germans of foreign origin to “re-emigrate” to North Africa. Furthermore, the party leader in Thuringia was in May convicted of publicly uttering the Hitler slogan “Alles fur Deutschland” (Everything for Germany). One would think that such outbursts would curb the party’s progress, but this was not the case.

The rejection of migrants is affecting almost all of Europe, putting institutions under pressure. Germany is reestablishing border controls and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has threatened to send migrants from Budapest to Brussels by bus.

The process of toughening up on the migration issue will begin in October at the EU summit, less than six months after the bloc’s Pact on Migration and Asylum, which aims for the better management of migration flows, came into force. However, this was without political gains for the parties in power, as demonstrated this summer by the far right’s surge in the European elections and the National Rally’s surge in legislative elections in France, as well as the Alternative for Germany’s success. Europe is in a state of retreat. The rejection of migrants is everywhere and no one really knows how to stop illegal migration.

Springfield, Ohio, US, September. A town of 60,000 inhabitants hit by deindustrialization and demographic decline. Home to 15,000 Haitian immigrants. On Sept. 10, the name of this town made the news worldwide. With immigration at the heart of the televised debate against Kamala Harris, Donald Trump blurted out, in front of tens of millions of viewers: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in (Haitian migrants). They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there … and it’s a shame.”

On screen, the images were striking. In her dismay, Harris bursts out laughing. Prior to the debate, gossip had spread — denied by the authorities — that, in Ohio, undocumented Haitians were killing pets, cats and dogs, but also ducks and geese, to eat them. Not without an ulterior political motive.

The rejection of migrants is affecting almost all of Europe, putting institutions under pressure.

Azouz Begag

Two months earlier, Joe Biden had granted temporary protection to 300,000 Haitians living in the US due to the crisis in their home country. To make matters worse, in August, a school bus was hit by a minivan driven by a Haitian immigrant with no driver’s license. The accident claimed the life of one child and injured 13 others. The far right took the opportunity to stigmatize the Democrats’ migration policy, hastily portraying Trump as the defender of (American) animals victimized by hordes of illegal refugees with “barbaric morals.” His dehumanizing rhetoric toward migrants was in full force, after he had already compared them to a “snake” and claimed immigration was “poisoning the blood of our country.”

In Springfield, fear has now settled in for good. A middle school closed its doors after the town hall was evacuated because of a bomb threat. Haitian immigrants are terrorized. They feel the presence of ghosts from the past. In Springfield, 120 years ago, on March 7, 1904, to be exact, more than 1,000 white men stormed the jail to extract a prisoner — a Black man accused of killing a white policeman. He was shot and hanged from a post. Then the rioters destroyed and set fire to the Black neighborhood.

The atmosphere is poisoned by the stench of unleashed racism, reminiscent of humanity’s darkest hours. Southport, Solingen, Mannheim and Springfield are symbols of the inflammatory nature of immigration when it is manipulated by politicians who are willing to lose their souls in an attempt to win an election.

• Azouz Begag is a writer and former minister (2005-2007) and researcher in economics and sociology. He is a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research. X: @AzouzBegag