Crass, inflammatory, self-serving – Donald Trump’s rhetoric on
immigration has been all of those, says Clare Foges. Nonetheless,
his basic approach to this issue is right: we do need to strengthen
our borders. The West simply cannot absorb all the people who
would not only like to move to it, but who, under today’s openended
asylum laws, have a legal claim to do so. Those laws were
devised for an earlier age, “before smartphones gave the world’s
poorest a window on prosperity elsewhere”. Yes, Trump sounds
heartless when he says victims of domestic abuse and gang
violence should no longer generally qualify for asylum in the US,
but he’s being more realistic than those who imply the West can
“alleviate suffering everywhere”. Look what happened after
Angela Merkel declared an open-door approach to refugees. It
spurred millions to make risky journeys to the continent, and
spurred Europeans to vote in droves for the far-right. Our priority
should be helping poorer countries develop so that fewer people
wish to leave them. In the end, Trump’s brutal clarity on this issue
is preferable to the mixed messages being sent by Europe’s leaders.
