For a group making up just over 3% of the world’s population, international immigrants make a lot of headlines. Immigration is one of the hot topics of our times, and countries on every continent but Antarctica are conflicted over how to respond to the foreign-born individuals within their borders. Immigrants themselves face challenges adjusting to life in a new environment. Throughout the world, conversations about immigration regularly become contentious debates. Many people don’t want immigrants in their communities, and many immigrants endure unimaginable hardships both during their journey and after arriving to their new homes. Despite this, people continue crossing borders in search of a better life.
This blog series will look at some of the big themes of immigration today and explore what it means to immigrate despite all the challenges immigrants face, from perilous journeys to hostile reception. In this post, we examine the rise of anti-immigrant sentiments in recent years in various countries and the motivations behind this widespread resistance to immigration.
The Rise of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Around the World
Europe’s Far Right
Far-right, nationalist political parties have been growing in Europe over the last few years. These parties vary from country to country, but they tend to be nationalist, anti-European Union, and anti-globalization, as well as anti-immigration. The recent influx of refugees from Syria and other Muslim-majority countries has been especially contentious throughout Europe, contributing to the rise of nationalist parties. A 2016 overview of European nationalist parties from the BBC shows that nationalist parties have gained ground in most countries, with the level of support higher than 20% in several cases.
Data from this year shows these parties are continuing to grow. For example, France’s far-right Front National was at 14% in 2016, yet in 2017 Front National presidential candidate Marine Le Pen claimed second place in the first round of voting with 21.3% of the vote, making it to the second round. Her campaign included frequent anti-Muslim rhetoric and a promise to suspend immigration to protect the French way of life. (She ultimately lost the second round of voting, and the party’s showing was less impressive in the later parliamentary elections.)
France is not alone. From Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, Western to Eastern Europe, wealthy to struggling economies, countries throughout the continent have seen nationalist parties with similar messages gaining momentum. These small parties have often been able to mobilize far more people than just their traditional support base, as happened recently when about 60,000 people showed up for a nationalist march on Poland’s independence day. Widespread anti-immigrant sentiment helps explain why these parties are doing so well. When citizens of 12 European countries were polled, many said they no longer felt at home in their countries because of high numbers of immigrants. Another survey on reactions to the refugee crisis showed a majority of Europeans see refugees as a threat to their countries. In these circumstances, people are turning to parties calling for restricted immigration and a focus the needs of native-born citizens rather than new immigrants.
One of the starkest examples of nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment was the UK vote to leave the European Union, commonly known as Brexit.
Brexit Vote
On June 23, 2016, voters in the UK went to the polls to vote on a nationwide referendum to leave the European Union. The results favored “leave” with a 51.9% majority, despite “remain” majorities among younger voters and specific regions like Scotland and London. Though the debate over leaving the EU was complex, immigration was a critical concern for many voters, and a central focus of both the leave campaign and general media coverage.
Much of the momentum for the leave campaign came from negative reactions to the recent history of increased immigration that grew the population of ethnic minorities in the UK, particularly outside of traditionally diverse urban areas. These attitudes fueled the anti-EU movement because the EU’s single market requires free movement of people between member states and relatively equal access to social services for immigrants. Leaving the EU allows the UK to impose stricter immigration requirements or quotas and limit immigrants’ access to welfare.
While some of the fear regarding increasing immigration was based on actual trends in the rate of immigration, myths and misconceptions played a large role in creating fear as well. For example, the UK drastically overestimated the number of students overstaying visas. Other rhetoric during the Brexit campaign focused on dramatic warnings of violence, terrorism, and other crime. Though anti-EU pundits cited concern over the increased rate of immigration in general, critics of Brexit blamed the outcome on xenophobia and racism directed toward non-white and religious minority immigrants in particular.
A significant amount of the negative attitudes focused on lower-skilled immigrants from poor countries. These immigrants face resentment based on the perception that they undercut UK citizen workers by working for lower wages, consequently putting UK workers out of a job. Others fear that poor immigrants might not work at all, simply draining social services and welfare without any history of paying into the system, which uses UK citizens tax revenue. Still others reject the new immigrants for cultural rather than economic reasons. Leave supporters often expressed concern about immigrants from countries seen as affiliated with terrorism and “radical Islam,” fearing violence and cultural threat or invasion. These fears are directly tied to membership in the EU because of the EU proposal to evenly distribute refugees and asylum seekers throughout member countries. This obligation to accept refugee and asylum seekers was seen as a drain on the economy because of the cost of resettlement and social services, and as a threat to the UK identity because the new cultures are considered by many UK citizens as undesirable or dangerous.
While negotiations over the terms of the UK’s exit from the EU officially have a two year deadline from the date Article 50 was triggered (placing the automatic exit date in March of 2019), consequences of the Brexit vote have already appeared. New UK Prime Minister Theresa May has been working to implement controls to slow immigration after the Brexit vote. The policy changes and negative immigration attitudes highlighted by the referendum vote seem to be making the intended impact, as net migration has dropped since the vote.
Election of Donald Trump
The 2016 US presidential election revealed a similar discontent with immigration in the United States. Then-candidate Donald Trump called for multiple policies restricting immigration, from building a wall along the entire US-Mexico border and making Mexico pay for it, to banning Muslims from entering the country, to drastically increasing the number of deportations. While critics claimed his promises were too harsh or simply unrealistic, Trump’s support base loved what they saw as a commitment to enforcing the law and putting Americans first.
These supporters propelled Trump to victory, leaving many wondering how closely President Trump would follow his own policy recommendations from the campaign trail. So far, the results are mixed. In some cases he has done exactly what he said he would do, such as announcing the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Other promises have been ignored completely, while he has attempted to implement still others in a watered-down form, frequently facing legal or political hurdles in doing so. For example, he has created three different travel bans targeting specific countries, most of which are Muslim-majority, but federal judges have largely blocked their implementation. The border wall also seems unlikely to materialize, at least in the way Trump wanted it. There are prototypes of different wall designs being built, but Mexico unsurprisingly refuses to contribute any funds, and it’s unclear whether Congress will foot the bill, either.
Trump’s frequent immigration-related announcements seem to be constantly on the news. The uncertainty of what he’s going to do next keeps people on their toes, and appears to be deterring many would-be immigrants. Statistics show that the number of illegal border crossings are down about 70% from last year. Somewhat surprisingly, deportations are also down 43%— possibly because there are fewer crossings, and new arrivals apprehended near the border account for a large chunk of deportations—but arrests of undocumented immigrants are up. Although Trump’s immigration policy reform has been marked by frequent, unpredictable changes, it’s clear that his administration embodies strong anti-immigrant sentiments shared by many Americans.
Anti-immigrant sentiment is sometimes even directed at people who aren’t themselves immigrants. This certainly happens in the US, usually when someone born here is assumed to be an immigrant because of their race, name, speech, or other characteristics. However, our last example takes this occurrence to an extreme level: an entire ethnic group is treated as undesirable immigrants wherever they go, including in their country of origin.
Rohingya Crisis
The Rohingya are Muslims with roots in Buddhist-majority Myanmar (also known as Burma). Despite their centuries-long presence in the country, the Burmese government considers the Rohingya immigrants from Bangladesh and denies them citizenship and a host of other rights. The Rohingya’s problems escalated this August, when an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group resulted in massive military “clearance operations” that killed hundreds of Rohingya, burned thousands of homes, and caused as many as half a million Rohingya to flee the country.
Most of these refugees went to Bangladesh, which wants Myanmar to take them back. Bangladesh has called Myanmar’s response, which included planting landmines to prevent the Rohingya from returning, a provocation of war. Rohingya refugees in other countries also face hostility. India, for example, wants to deport them, citing security concerns. Wherever they go, the Rohingya are viewed as foreign and therefore undesirable.
These examples have shown a similar trend all over the world: the state of being an immigrant invites hostility, regardless of the immigrant’s unique circumstances. Immigrants can arrive legally or illegally, follow the laws or not, get an education or not, relocate to escape persecution or simply to find work – whatever they do, someone will object strongly, and perhaps violently, to their very presence. Not everyone reacts to immigrants this negatively, but every group of immigrants, in every location, seems to receive some backlash. Looking at these recent trends, anti-immigrant sentiment only seems to be growing.
What are the roots of these anti-immigrant sentiments? We will explore those next.