Less than a decade ago, Sweden was accepting more migrants relative to its population than any other nation on Earth. Its state TV ran ads proclaiming “My country is also yours” and that Swedes must integrate into the new multicultural reality.
Now, this year, more migrants will leave Sweden than arrive there.
What’s more, the land of Volvo is merely leading a trend that has seen numerous European nations rethink immigrationist policies. The good news is that this reflects how many native Europeans are rejecting woke, multiculturalist conditioning. The bad news is that their governments are generally playing politics, trying to stave off challenges from the anti-immigrationist Right.
No Coincidence
Just consider, for example, Germany’s ruling Social Democrats’ (SPD’s) migration epiphany. It occurred just as the anti-immigrationist Alternative for Germany (AfD) was poised to win its very first state election. Coincidence? And, oh, what an epiphany it is, too. Per The Telegraph:
When news broke that a jumbo jet full of hardened criminals had taken off from Leipzig, in eastern Germany, to Kabul in the early hours of Aug 30, the world was caught by surprise.
No Western country has officially dealt with Kabul since the Taliban’s chaotic takeover of power in Afghanistan in 2021.
But Berlin was determined to rid itself of 20 convicts, among them murderers and rapists, and show it was serious about putting public safety first.
It was the latest shock[ing] migration move by Germany, once the European country most welcoming to refugees.
On Thursday, another plan from Berlin sent shock waves across the continent. The country’s migration commissioner proposed taking over Britain’s axed migration deal with Rwanda to put an end to people crossing into the EU from Russia.
The scramble to take a hard line on the issue of migration has exposed a country with a government on the brink, fighting a string of crises as it struggles to cling … to power.
What are presented as serious plans appear to be attempts to stave off electoral defeat to the hard-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) on migration.
Down and out in polling, the flight to Kabul was just the elixir that [German chancellor] Olaf Scholz and his bedraggled government needed.
Power Über Alles
One might ask, though, why “hardened criminals” weren’t deported immediately after being identified. Instead, the SPD waited until two days before the September 1 election. That sure reflects dedication — to clinging to power.
Such opportunism reigns across Europe, too — with Britain a notable exception. As The Telegraph wrote just this weekend:
[In France,] Michel Barnier, President [Emmanuel] Macron’s choice as Prime Minister, has a reputation as a hardliner on immigration. The direction of travel in France and Germany is therefore clear: on migration, both countries have had enough of the liberal policies that are still championed here by the Labour Government.
Across the EU, the idea of outsourcing asylum processing to third countries is gaining ground. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni has done a deal with Albania, while Denmark also plans to send migrants to Rwanda. Sweden, meanwhile, has reversed decades of porous borders: this year, more migrants will leave than arrive there.
Principle or politics (or both), Sweden’s about-face is profound. Just consider the aforementioned immigrationist propaganda (below) that the nation’s state TV aired in very recent history.
Then there’s that outlier, the U.K., “with mass immigration, both legal and illegal, still roaring ahead,” states The Telegraph. The reason?
Britons rewarded their left-wing Labour Party — immigrationist to the core — with complete power in recent elections.
This left-wing immigration addiction isn’t unfathomable, either. In fact, Labour’s Andrew Neather, a former advisor to ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, explained it well in 2009. The massive Third World immigration into the U.K. over the previous 15 years, he informed, was designed to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.” This motivation is operative throughout the Western world, too.
All a Big Con Job?
Yet it isn’t just the Right-wing™ AfD and its co-ideologists who oppose nation-rending migration. Just consider Jordanian academic Dr. Mudar Zahran, who himself is living as an asylee in Britain. A self-professed “orthodox Muslim,” Zahran nonetheless opposes massive Third World migration into Europe. In fact, he in 2015 strongly advocated (video below) deporting the Muslims who’d at the time flooded the Continent.
What’s more, Zahran stated that most of the Syrians entering Europe almost a decade ago were not legitimate asylees. Rather, they were mainly opportunists and, sometimes even, terrorists. And this raises an important point. On the one hand, we’ve heard for years — from famed psychologist Steven Pinker, for instance — about how the world is actually the safest and most peaceful it has been in history.
Yet we’re also told that legitimate refugees are now so numerous that we must welcome millions of them.
Moreover, Muslim refugees won’t go to rich, sparsely populated Arab nations, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. Their co-religionists don’t want them.
Instead, they must be shipped into the heart of what was once Christendom.
Does all this add up?
Just consider our situation in the U.S. There is no Pol Pot south of our border exterminating one-third of his nation’s populace; there’s no Rwandan-type genocide. Sure, people in Latin America are poorer than in the U.S., but so are most countries’ populations. The world has always been a tough place. Yet today we may grant someone asylum because his nation isn’t as accepting of his “sexuality” as San Francisco is.
To some extent, this reflects Western weakness, the soft, soy-boy notion that triggered feelings warrant asylee status. But mostly it’s about importing a foreign electoral army that will do the job — giving the Left unassailable power — native Westerners won’t do.