Why won’t governments reduce immigration?

I’m fascinated by the subject of immigration because I’m a sucker for moral complexity. For decades, too, I’ve been an immigrant myself, though I’ve played by the rules (at some cost), and I’ve never been a burden on the state (to the contrary). Besides, I am by nature territorial. Even having perfectly agreeable house-sitters in London during my summers in Brooklyn has been painful, and the first thing this Goldilocks has always done on returning home is expunge every reminder that bears have been sleeping in my bed and eating my porridge. That said, we’re all territorial. Hence the moral complexity.

So I’ve developed an unhealthy addiction to reading comment threads after articles about immigration. I never comment myself; this is a spectator sport. Admittedly, people may be more likely to contribute opinions on immigration when they want less of it. Still, by now I must have read tens if not hundreds of thousands of online diatribes and laments by ordinary readers. My casual survey can’t substitute for more scientific polling, but these are still individuals to be reckoned with, their communities often transformed beyond recognition in a mere twenty-five years. Their views might count for something or so you would think. Note that the same patterns crop up not only in the conservative Telegraph and Wall Street Journal, but among the lofty left-leaning subscribers to the New York Times.

Voters in the US and the UK who would slow the drastic reshaping of their societies are disenfranchised

Generally more unvarnished than the decorously hedged articles to which they’re attached, these threads universally radiate two emotions: 1) rage; 2) impotence.

In a 2023 Gallup poll, 72 percent of Americans wanted immigration kept at its present level or decreased. It is increasing. Including “known gotaways” (but not unknown ones), during the Biden administration more than eight million foreigners have crossed into the US by “irregular” means. In a 2023 UnHerd poll, 57 percent of Britons agreed that “immigration levels are too high;” only 20 percent disagreed.

Yet according to newly released ONS data, net legal immigration is hitting record levels — revised upwards to 745,000 from 606,000 for 2022 and 672,000 for this year (not yet revised upwards). That “net” gambit, too, is an intentional obfuscation of Britain’s fast-forward ethnic make-over. Of the roughly 500,000 emigrants who left Britain last year, only about 200,000 were neither British nor EU citizens. Of the more than a million immigrants who settled here last year, then, roughly a million were non-EU arrivals, who on average extract more than they contribute to the state.

US Democrats who want controlled borders have no one to vote for. It’s either keep the welcome wagon rolling or resort to Trump — for most Democrats, an anathema. Britons who want to put the brakes on this extraordinary social experiment also have no one to vote for.

In 2024, the Reform Party isn’t likely to score a single member of parliament. Protesting the Tories’ sorry record on lowering immigration to the “tens of thousands” means settling for Labour, which now opportunistically suggests it would reduce newcomers to 200,000 per year but with no feasible plan for how. Voters in both countries who would slow the drastic reshaping of their societies are thus perfectly disenfranchised. Shed-loads of cultural strangers have been imposed on their “democracies” absent any consultation with the electorate.

The combination of rage and impotence is combustible. While I’d never defend the wanton destruction of property last month in Dublin, the knee-jerk classification of the rioters as “far right” amounted to stuffing all these protesters frantically into a black box labeled BAD. The Garda Síochána’s refusal to release the nationality of the man who triggered the unrest by stabbing a woman and three children has been worse than coy; try contemptuous. Were the culprit a native-born Irishman, his nationality would have been released in a heartbeat.

Rage combined with impotence must eventually have electoral consequences and with nowhere else to go voters head to the extremes. Geert Wilders’s anti-Islamist party having just topped the poll in the Netherlands shocked European leaders but it didn’t shock me. Half the population of Amsterdam isn’t Dutch.

If reducing immigration would be such a crowd-pleaser, why have politicians kept the flood gates open? One contingent of those commenters believes the dilution of native populations is a conspiracy. Me, I blame fecklessness. When confronting millions and perhaps in time billions of people fiercely determined to seek a “better life,” deterring them from doing so is hard. Withdrawal from obstructive and outdated “human rights” agreements would look mean-spirited. The UK’s Home Office is a fifth column, but you can’t simply sack all those wet civil servants, can you? Fashionable idolization of “diversity” — anything but a strength — conveniently justifies passivity.

In the US especially, the sheer numbers are overwhelming. The system cannot cope and it’s easier for the border patrol to pile migrants into buses to Chicago so at least they’re out of officialdom’s hair. Trump aside, most politicians (like most columnists) are loath to appear unfeeling or unpleasant. All told, no one in power seems to know how to stem the flow of immigration logistically or legally even in the rare instances that they want to, and they’ll all be out of power soon enough, so who cares? It’s not only newspaper readers who feel impotent. Ask Suella Braverman.

By 2100, Africa’s population is almost certain to reach four billion, although that’s assuming these folks stay in Africa. Reading the demographic tea leaves, I’m sometimes lulled into fatalism. If I foresee a socially volatile future — you can repeatedly hammer into people that the word “invasion” is offensive, but you can’t keep them from feeling invaded — most native western populations are probably too complacent, and too old, to foment an effective popular rebellion over immigration before the reverse colonization of our countries is a done deal. Horse bolts; stable door shuts well thereafter.

Unfortunately, such fatalism suits our feckless betters down to the ground. Could governments keep the influx to manageable and assimilable levels if they really, really tried? Yeah, probably. But it would be too expensive, too politically risky and too much trouble.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.