There is a lot to criticize about the new British Conservatives, but none of them are ambiguous. Whether they're talking about climate, trade, or the conflict between Israel and Palestine, if there's a chance to raise tensions, they'll be enthusiastic about it. However, in no area has their confidence been greater than on migration, where Tory leaders are letting the world know that it is international norms that must adapt to their electoral fantasies, rather than the other way around. Just a few days ago, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak intervened in front of Giorgia Meloni's national-populist circle in Rome and declared his own war: “On the enemies […] “They are intentionally bringing people to our shores to try to destabilize our society.”
The irony is that Sunak is an Oblate of the Sacred Heart compared to his former home secretaries, migrant daughters Priti Patel and Suella Braverman. They are at the forefront of a punkish conservatism that sets the tone for immigration policy around the world. Its representatives not only organize raves like in Rome, but also commit violence against their opponents, lie through their mouths and promote their ideological garbage to such an extent that it is already difficult to distinguish a center-right or center-left party to find government that is not impregnated with it. The new accepted truth is that human mobility poses an existential threat to our societies. A threat in the face of which everything is justified, even that which does not fit into our flower power concept of the rule of law.
If you have lived on planet Earth for the last 20 years, you already know that this argument is not new, but I have a feeling that the year 2023 will be remembered as the moment when norms and institutions stopped to limit political slogans in order to adapt to them. In regions as diverse as Europe, North America, Africa and Latin America, we have experienced a domino effect, the consequences of which will be difficult to reverse. The anti-immigration offensive is clearly felt at the borders of the target regions, where solidarity is criminalized and an extensive and complex legal industry is up to mischief with immigration control measures; and within the countries themselves, where the institutional harassment of millions of undocumented workers and their families is accepted with the aplomb typical of de facto apartheid.
Few political agreements illustrate this development better than the Migration and Asylum Pact, which is about to be adopted by the European institutions.
Far from the gaze of voters, the logic of externalizing immigration control has transformed the routes into veritable crossroads, placing our governments in the hands of a collection of autocrats and criminal groups that in other times would only have been invited to La Is.
Few political agreements illustrate this trend better than the Migration and Asylum Pact recently adopted by the European institutions and of which our government is so proud. Three years of real negotiation circus leaves some fundamental headlines. First, Member States unanimously share the need to seal the EU's external borders. If that means militarizing the European border protection agency (Frontex) and making it an accomplice to state crimes, then so be it. Fortunes are being invested to prevent the mobility of people at destination, transit and origin, Orwellian personal identification systems are being introduced, and the idea is being promoted that only hell awaits those who attempt to enter paradise illegally.
The second major area of interest in the Pact concerns the distribution of competences in matters of international protection. The signatories also agree on the centrality of this point, but here the positions are divided into two tribes: those who will do everything to get rid of the asylum responsibility, but admit that it will be inevitable that the EU will take on a role of that; and those who immediately look away. In addition to France, Germany and the Nordic countries, the first group includes the countries of the southern strip. They are the ones who designed the externalization model, militarized their borders, or adopted such brilliant ideas as “protecting” refugees in belligerent dictatorships like Rwanda’s. The other side is the eastern countries, which have so far been led by Hungary and Poland (although the latter could soon leave). For this group, international law only reaches their cousins in Ukraine – although with them, it must be said, Europe has shown how far it can go when it wants – and they have the new fine mechanism for those who are refugees reject, welcome. with such edifying terms as “rape… in legal terms.”
The most striking thing about the new European pact, however, is not what it says, but what it leaves out. And at this point one can also recognize an evil that has spread to other regions of the world: And this despite the fact that more than 80% of migration movements are of a purely work-related nature and the main destination countries in rich regions are faced with economic challenges in view of the existential demographic challenge, no one seems to be thinking about how these flows can be controlled. With the exception of a barely innovative mechanism to facilitate the arrival of highly qualified personnel and toothless rhetoric about temporary mobility and adaptation of talent to the needs of our labor markets, the European Pact on Migration and Asylum is a desert. No wonder, considering that the negotiations were conducted by experts in the field of crime and terrorism and not in the fields of employment, social security, growth, taxes and the other areas that affect people living in the EU settle down and work, benefit enormously.
The world is becoming a space fiercely hostile to the diversity and social change that migration brings.
The direct consequence of this political imbalance will be the increase in irregular immigration flows – the vast majority of which arrive not by boat but by plane – and the hidden competition for talent. Because while Fernando Grande-Marlaska crosses the red lines at the southern border and Olaf Scholz announces a draconian tightening of German immigration policy, the labor ministries of their respective governments are engaging in semi-secret administrative juggling to legalize existing workers and attract hundreds of thousands to our economy's needs, at all skill levels.
Replace “Europe” with “United States” and “Germany” with “Chile” and you will find very similar stories in which it is difficult to tell whether immigration policies are immoral rather than idiotic. Unfortunately, things will get a lot more complicated before they get better. 2023 also saw a coordinated consolidation of these national populist movements around the world. Some have managed to reach government or form parliamentary coalitions, but many have managed to break the cordons sanitaire that the moderate right had hitherto imposed on them. From the America of Milei, Kast and Bukele to the Europe of Meloni, Wilders, Abascal and Orbán to the ultranationalism of Trump, Putin or Modi, the world is becoming a space that is open to diversity and the social change that migrations bring with them. extremely hostile.
What can we do but pray? Frankly, I expect very little in this area from leadership like that of our President, who has adapted to the existing political framework to the point of burying (literally) the Melilla tragedy of 2022 and putting one of his leaders at the top of the list Cadiz in the last elections. I don't expect much from Sumar, who could only include a reference to the immigration issue in his pact with the PSOE, and unfortunately that was support for the European agreement. I hope to see a bottom-up transformation of this debate and the role that non-state actors can play in this. Because 2023 was also the year in which the popular legislative initiative to legalize people without papers reached the Congress of Deputies. This is by far the most important political process led by migrant organizations in Spain. The norm will be discussed in the coming months and we do not know whether the political groups will have the courage to rescue from sub-citizenship more than 400,000 women, children and men who live, work and dream in our country. Whatever they do, this initiative has already changed history and that is also a reason to remember this year.
Gonzalo Fanjul He is Director of Policy Analysis at the Barcelona Health Institute and co-founder of the PorCausa Foundation.
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