Are Borders Back in Europe?

Among the Syrians, Moroccans, and Algerians thronging the United Nations’ Camp Lipa in northwestern Bosnia, I met a young Afghan man on his way to England who typified one potential problem Europe is facing amid powerfully resurgent mass illegal immigration.

The young man said in broken English that he’d not fled the Taliban, identified by the U.S. Treasury Department as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Group. As a matter of fact, he carried his admiration for the Islamic militants on his quest for good-paying work in England.

“Taliban good! They are good Muslim people, and I am Muslim,” the immigrant said with a thumbs up gesture, when asked what he thinks of Afghan’s rulers. “Very good.”
Enthusiasm for the Taliban is but one troubling indicator of what’s on the way to Europe these days amid expanding crowds of young male Afghans, Algerians, Tunisians, Moroccans, Syrians, Turks, and Pakistanis. They have put Europe on trajectory to match the 2014-2016 mass migration cataclysm of nearly three million, among them many dozens of violent terrorists. 

Europe’s approach to its mass migration crisis warrants American attention and close study, if for no other reason than that ideas for addressing common problems really matter right now. Candidates running for high office in the 2024 elections both in Europe and in the United States, including for president, may adopt, reject, or at least consider a raft of interesting policy ideas the E.U. member states are batting around. This is also an opportunity for American campaigners to take cues from how European electorates are falling on such a similar issue. (Hint: they’re all moving to the restrictionist Right.)

[Read the whole thing at the American Mind.]