Trump demands immediate deportation of migrants
The US has a long tradition of serving newly settled citizens in a style that puts other nations to shame
DONALD TRUMP yesterday fired up his supporters by calling for suspected illegal immigrants to be immediately deported without judicial process.
In a pair of tweets sent during the drive to his Virginia golf course, the US president piled pressure on the Republicans in Congress in advance of a vote on immigration this week.
“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our country,” he tweeted. “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no judges or court cases, bring them back from where they came.”
Mr Trump, elected on a platform of clamping down on undocumented immigrants, also labelled the US system “a mockery to good immigration policy and law and order”.
Meanwhile, a 26-seater restaurant in rural Virginia became a symbol of the bitter divisions in Trump’s America.
The Red Hen’s owner sparked an online backlash after asking Mr Trump’s press secretary to leave the premises because of the administration’s “inhumane and unethical” policies.
The immigration issue came to a head last week when it emerged that 2,500 children had been separated from their parents as a result of the administration’s zero-tolerance policy.
Although Mr Trump signed an order to keep families together amid a wave of protest, officials are struggling to navigate the complex regulations.
The result is causing frustration in the White House, where Mr Trump has no power to lift legal protection for im- migrants and prevent the law running its course in court.
A poll for CBS illustrates the divide in the US. While 74 per cent of Republicans believe those who enter illegally should be punished “as an example of toughness”, 79 per cent of Democrats believe they should be treated well “as an example of kindness”.
That divide exploded into a public row at the Red Hen over the weekend.
Sarah Sanders, White House press secretary, was quietly asked to leave when staff – who had seen her defend the border policy – asked their boss Stephanie Wilkinson to take a stand.
Mrs Sanders then tweeted about the episode from her official White House Twitter account, leading to a deluge of vitriolic reviews for the Red Hen from Trump supporters, many of them living thousands of miles from the restaurant.
Walter Shaub, Barack Obama’s ethics chief, accused Mrs Sanders of breaking the law by using her position of power to incite harassment of the restaurant.
TO BE “strong” or to “have heart”: this was how Donald Trump summarised the dilemma over whether to continue with a policy of separating migrant children from their parents and locking them in cages. His choice was decided by a plea for compassion from his wife Melania (herself an immigrant) who, like the biblical Jewish queen Esther begging the great Persian King Ahasuerus to show mercy to her people, softened the ruler’s heart.
That such a question should be decided by the entreaties of a first lady has rather a whiff of banana republic about it. But writ large, Mr Trump’s emotional zigzag reflects that of Western societies confronting one of the greatest policy dilemmas of our day: mass migration.
Defending his harshness, the US president often cites Europe as a cautionary tale. “We don’t want what is happening with immigration in Europe to happen with us!” he says.
In this, he is both right and wrong. He is right that Europe’s immigration dilemma is severe, and perhaps existential. But he is also wrong, because the US will never be like Europe. In an era of high migration, it is far better placed to cope.
This is, after all, an era. It is not a momentary policy issue or a false controversy stirred up by political partisans. We live in an age in which more people than ever are on the move. This isn’t because of the European Union or the US’S elite East Coast liberals.
The main, long-term drivers of the surge in migration are technology and wealth. Armed with a smartphone and a few thousand dollars, it’s surprisingly easy to enter the territory of a highly developed country. And the only methods that might stem the flows – mass deportation, mass detention, “gunboats”, and so on – have been considered impractical or inhumane.
Because of this difficult reality, the debate is often absurdly polarised. On one side, we have the “white genocide” brigade, who grotesquely equate mass immigration to mass murder. They argue that western liberal elites are committing a kind of ethnic crime, diluting white, native populations with black and brown newcomers who will eventually outbreed and annihilate the European race. This racist, neo-fascist narrative posits Europeans or white Americans as heirs to a pure, racial legacy that makes them uniquely and genetically predisposed to intelligence, democracy, tolerance and so on, all of which is threatened by immigration.
On the other extreme are the ultra-globalists, who enlist for their cause a bizarre kind of pseudo-science. They say things like: “We’re all immigrants really,” or: “Humans have always migrated.”
This latter point is, of course, factually true. From the first waves of migration out of (and back into) Africa, to the vast Eurasian expansion of the Yamnaya nomads, to the near total replacement of the British population that built Stonehenge, humans have always moved, mixed, split off, died out, replaced, colonised and conquered.
But this is hardly a model for mass immigration into modern societies. For one thing, it ignores the fact that historic migrations have often been violent replacement events that upend established social orders. It is disingenuous to pretend that largescale immigration has no implications for political and social harmony.
The pace of the change is not quite as fast as many people think, but it does, in the long run, amount to meaningful demographic change. In the US, the proportion of the population that is foreign-born went from eight per cent in 1990 to 14 per cent in 2013. In France, it rose from seven per cent in 1999 to 12 per cent in 2013. In Britain, it went from under seven per cent in 1991 to over 12 per cent in 2013 (latest comparable OECD data). Immigrants also tend to have more children than the native-born, so these numbers will generate dramatic demographic shifts.
Although both the US and Europe are experiencing aspects of the same phenomenon, however, they are in very different situations. Immigration in Europe poses a far greater challenge to our existing social and political settlements. This isn’t just about the EU. The strictures it places on immigration policy don’t help, but with or without Brussels, national governments face a serious dilemma.
Most modern European societies have emerged from periods of ethnic homogeneity and their resulting conceptions of nationhood tend to be bound to history, religion and geographical continuity. This also underlies the design of European labour markets and welfare systems. At the same time, young, single males, Muslims and refugees make up a disproportionate number of the immigrants coming to Europe, all factors that are associated with worse integration and economic outcomes.
In continental Europe, you can see the impact of this in the marked difference in employment between native-born and foreign-born populations. In Germany, unemployment is four per cent for locals and seven per cent for the foreign-born. In Italy, it’s 11 per cent for locals and 15 per cent for the foreign-born. And in France, it’s nine per cent to a whacking 17 per cent.
The same is not true of “Anglo Saxon” societies. In Britain, unemployment is five per cent both for locals and the foreign-born. In the US, those born abroad are actually more likely to have a job: just four per cent of them are unemployed, versus five per cent of locals. The immigrants coming to the US are more likely to consist of some form of family unit, travelling from Christian, Latin American countries in search of better opportunities. These factors tend to be associated with greater integration.
What’s more, the American political settlement emerged from a mass migration event and was designed to facilitate newcomers. Citizenship is conceptual and legal, based on the constitution and flag, rather than geographical and historical.
Despite Mr Trump’s rhetoric and electoral success, polls consistently show that Americans are more relaxed about immigration than Europeans.
The US tax and legal system means that illegal immigrants can pay taxes and, in “sanctuary cities”, testify in court or be stopped for minor offences, without fear of deportation. Such pragmatic arrangements would never have been accepted in Europe, whose deals with Turkey or Libya to slow migrant flows make the US child separation policy look almost humane.
European leaders love to denounce American racism or callousness. Instead, they should take a look at themselves. When history judges the way our societies handled this modern age of migration, it is undoubtedly the US that will come out on top.