Simon Hankinson, Lora Ries
Introduction: Who Gets to Decide?
“Only suicidal civilizations would allow this to go on,” reads the title of a video posted to “X” in August 2023.REF The clip seems to show dozens of illegal migrants hopping off a boat onto an English beach. They would have come from France, a short journey away across the English Channel. A month later, entrepreneur Elon Musk posted an X video clip from the city of Eagle Pass, Texas, one of many along the Southern border overrun with illegal aliens crossing unopposed into the United States.REF These two social media posts symbolize the immigration conundrum facing developed countries today. The developed, or “first,” worldREF has declining birth rates, high living standards, relatively stable governments, and relative physical security. The poorest parts of the world generally have high birth rates, low living standards, political instability, and violence. As nature abhors a vacuum, the security and prosperity of richer countries are a magnet for billions in poorer ones.
The question of this era is: Who gets to decide who is allowed to enter a country? Can sovereign nations enforce the immigration laws passed by their elected legislators, or do the masses of the “global majority” get to choose, without challenge, where they want to live? In the United States, President Joe Biden’s answer was the latter, despite a majority of Americans disapproving of his open-border policies.REF In Europe, an unceasing sea-borne flow of illegal migrants is being met with confusion, political polarization, and, ultimately, government failure to deal with the problem.
With the election of Donald Trump to a second, non-consecutive term, the American people decisively rejected the policy of facilitating and accommodating mass illegal migration through fraud or abuse of the asylum process. As in Europe, the U.S. has allowed its asylum system to collapse due to overly generous interpretation of the U.N. » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/border-security/report/the-us-must-redesign-asylum-law-21st-century-reality-and-put-america-first
