To recall one of the regular essay instructions from many of our schooldays, it’s time to ‘compare and contrast’ the approach by two different nations to protect their borders – and indeed their citizens. Let’s start in the US, where the latest figure for deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement teams since Donald Trump came to power is north of 250,000 – and that’s in under a year. Obviously, such a vast number is going to include some mistakes, and that is desperately regrettable. But the reality is murderers, rapists and other sex offenders as well as drug dealers have been booted out of the country and therefore unable to continue their lives of crime.
Now compare that with the criminal incompetence displayed by our Government which sought to counter the migration crisis which is gripping the entire European continent with the risible “one in, one out” scheme – and the latest update on that underscores the glaring ineptitude of the policy which was hailed by both the Prime Minister and Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary at the time, as “a game-changer.”
Since it was introduced, 153 people have been returned to France and 141 allowed in. The only game here has been turning Open House into charades.
As stated before, Europe has gone from being the continent of exploration to one of destination as much of the under-developed world seek to come here risking their lives and those of their loved ones in the process. Staggering sums of money are raised in a bid to reach the supposed Nirvana of Europe – and other nations are now trying to stem the flow.
In France, the hot favourite to replace the national embarrassment that is Emmanuel Macron at the elections in early 2027 is Jordan Bardella, the 30-year-old leader of the country’s National Rally party which takes an uncompromising line on stopping the unchecked influx of immigrants and just this week he said he was ready to fight it out with the rest of the European Union in Brussels so he could detach France from unduly lenient migration policies.
Elsewhere, Poland and Germany are taking tougher stances to halt the numbers arriving and Italian leader Giorgia Meloni has driven numbers down by 60 per cent after striking deals with countries from which the migrants depart such as Algeria and Tunisia.
With this background, only a group as tone deaf and out of touch as the European Union would last week announce any member nation refusing to take their share of the migrant arrivals would face hefty fines.
Hardly surprising then that, within days of this being announced, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia and Poland have said they will seek opt-outs and Hungary has said it will simply defy the latest Brussels diktat.
Heartening to see that “Union” part of the EU working so well, eh? Back to that comparison and, studying these figures, it’s easy to see why Donald Trump launched his verbal assault on Europe last week saying it is “weak and decaying.” He added Europe will be “unrecognisable” and “many of those countries will not be viable countries any longer.”
With the country reeling from a series of convictions of illegal immigrants for everything from rape and sexual assault to people trafficking, the idea we risk becoming ‘Eurotrashed’ appears eminently reasonable.
