In news of the weird and unexpected, yesterday Al Jazeera reported, “‘Send them back’ chants in EU Parliament after anti-migrant bill passes.” The ministers were literally hugging each other.
Well, maybe it isn’t that surprising. But first, the new Europe-wide law established “return hubs” in third countries, expanded detention powers (including home raids without judicial warrants), and fueled a general “hard rightward turn” in EU migration enforcement. PBS framed it as the strictest EU migration law in decades, explicitly modeled on U.S. ICE‑style tactics: extended detention periods, aggressive home searches, tougher entry bans, and offshored facilities where EU process protections are weakest.
“The new regulation will speed up the return process and increase returns of persons who have no legal right to stay in the EU,” said Nicholas Ioannides, deputy migration minister for Cyprus, which holds the rotating presidency of the 27-nation bloc. “Critics compared the regulation to the immigration policies of the Trump administration,” NPR said, without naming the critics (it was NPR and NGO activists).
“These new rules will ensure swifter, simpler, and more effective procedures across the European Union for returning non-EU nationals who have no right to stay, in full respect of international law and fundamental rights,” said Henna Virkkunen, EU commissioner for technology.
“This deal will give governments much broader powers to detain and deport people,” complained Marta Welander, a middle-aged white female activist employed by a migration NGO. “It looks set to normalize immigration raids, and expand the use of detention in prison-like facilities outside EU territory that are essentially legal black holes.”
Legal black holes is also a neat way to describe migration NGOs themselves. They are basically money vortexes disguised as charities that suck up our taxes and pay lawyers to sink the ship of state.
In my view, three things made these surprising “historic” reforms possible.
First, “far-right” (moderate conservative) parties have been ascendant in Europe, a trend that accelerated after President Trump’s re-election last year. Conservative and “reform” parties now make up about a third of all elected EU members.
Second, center-left parties —also about a third— joined the conservatives to pass the new anti-migration policies. Only the far-left parties (Greens and socialists) opposed the new package and shouted “shame!” at their colleagues after the vote passed. (Although you could hardly hear them over all the joyful celebrating.) Thanks to the center-left’s flip, it passed by an unbeatable two-thirds majority.
Third, the center-left’s course correction from pro-migrant virtue-signaling to pro-sanity common sense followed continuous pressure from the U.S. over the last 18 months, which ceaselessly argued that Europe was destroying itself with its open-borders migration policies, and often linked them to America’s pullback from NATO. According to this headline from EU News, last week, a majority of EU voters now want ICE-like migration policies:
You might fairly ask why I linked this political tipping point in Europe to Trump’s re-election. After all, as the experts always remind us, correlation doesn’t prove causation. Maybe Trump’s election and the rise of sanity in Europe were both caused by some other third factor. To answer, I would point to one specific policy decision, the closure of USAID, and to one person, President Trump, over whom the EU leaders fawned at yesterday’s G7 Summit.
First, follow the money! Think-tank analysts estimate that up to $2.3 billion annually in U.S. aid ($23 billion every 10 years) was tied to Europe’s “migration management” work. USAID’s closure effectively zeroed this out, leaving a sudden, large gap in financing for development and protection projects in the countries of origin and transit.
In other words, USAID paid the countries where migrants came from, and it paid the countries through which they traveled on their way to Europe. No longer.
The USAID money spigot is closed. Now the EU is reversing those incentives— by paying origin countries to “host” their own migrants. And, whether it was through tariffs, NATO drawdowns, or energy markets, President Trump has beaten European politics in arm-wrestling. This astonishing turnaround was far from certain. EU leaders actively opposed him during Trump 1.0. Remember this iconic 2018 picture, coincidentally also taken at a G7 Summit?
Or this nearly-as-famous shot of the German delegation at the UN General Assembly in September 2018, showing the German Foreign Minister and Ambassador smirking and laughing as Trump warned about Germany’s over-reliance on Russian oil.
Trump opposes open borders and unregulated immigration, especially in the U.S., but also in Europe. Headline from EuroNews, last September:
In July, he spoke at the UN with rhetoric resembling blunt-force trauma. “You’d better get your act together, or you’re not going to have a Europe anymore,” the President warned angrily, like he was leading an intervention. “You’ve got to stop this horrible invasion that’s happening to Europe.”
Now, in complete contrast to their smirking defiance during Trump 1.0, European leaders hang on his every word. They laugh in delight rather than derision when he strolls in late and tells them he is “the boss.” The leaders who used to resist him now want to curry his favor, because he’s got all the leverage. (TAW.)
It is difficult to overestimate how encouraging this week’s anti-migration vote is for the world’s prospects. With Europe’s electric migration issue handled by a broad coalition majority, what else could this newly empowered bloc accomplish, now that it has finally found its political legs? Free speech? Grooming gangs? Reversing decades of social degeneracy?
Could the West’s inevitable decline have just become a little less inevitable?
If, one year ago, I’d told you this was possible, you’d have laughed me right off of Substack. Yet here we are. As I assured our European cousins early last year: hang tight. After we save ourselves, we’re coming to save you, too.