The West Is Finally Realizing The Ancient Truth That Open Borders Kill Nations
Kristen Ziccarelli
On June 1, Poland jolted the globalist movement, with Karol Nawrocki, a conservative historian and defender of national heritage, winning the presidential race in a narrow but decisive victory. His win is not an outlier but part of a broader European trend, in which voters across the continent have increasingly supported leaders who promise to defend their national identity and borders.
A decade after Germany threw open its borders to hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, it is time to confront an obvious truth: The open-border experiment has failed. The promises of humanitarian uplift, cultural enrichment, and economic growth have instead birthed troubling social fragmentation, deepening economic insecurity, and surging waves of crime that are reshaping the continent — and world.
This experiment has been tested in both Europe and the U.S. — the consequences of this leftist, globalist ideology are relatively similar. In the U.S., criminal aliens have victimized innocent Americans like Laken Riley, and violent members of Tren de Aragua have taken over apartments in Colorado. In Europe, migrant gangs in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and others in the Baltic and Nordic regions have skyrocketed violent crime and spread drugs in otherwise peaceful communities. In Belgium, local imams instead of Belgian law govern parts of Brussels. The Netherlands has struggled with the legacy of Theo van Gogh’s murder by a radicalized Moroccan-Dutch youth. Italy’s southern ports have faced repeated clashes with illegal African migrants. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who is struggling to get migrants to self-deport even with enormous financial incentives, recently acknowledged, “we do have a problem with integration of immigrants.”
The Promise Of Integration Ignored West’s Fundamental Christian Identity
The left, in championing mass migration, promised that integration would follow swiftly, that migrants would adapt to western norms, and that society would emerge stronger. Instead, we see a fractured Europe — its cities dotted with enclaves, foreign customs govern parallel societies governed, and assimilation is not only lacking, but often actively rejected.
Europeans are seeing their communities overrun, feeling estranged in their own countries, and realizing how quickly their way of life can be destroyed by a few bad policies and leaders who refuse to listen to them. To be clear, the “European culture” people are striving to preserve is not a matter of language, cuisine, or architecture — though those elements are important too. It’s Christian civilization — laws, values, and traditions, based on God-given rights. The very sense of the person stems from the Christian worldview.
From the Benedictine monasteries that preserved scripture through the Middle Ages to the Catholic cathedrals that still shape its skylines and the moral frameworks that undergird its legal codes, Christianity defines Europe. To sever the continent from this spiritual root is to erase the source of its identity.
Most Immigrants From Foreign Oppose These Christian Values
But did we have to undergo this nightmare to realize that open borders and mass migration are not a good idea? History offers us a sobering ledger of mass migration, shattering culture and reversing the fabric of society. Enoch Powell’s 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech — which at that time practically ruined his career — vindicates today’s realists. We are witnessing precisely what he warned of: “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood.’” This was a plea to preserve what bound Britain together — what so many across the west are expressing now in the streets and in the ballot boxes for their own nations. Even in ancient times, the Roman Empire’s importation of Goths and other tribes led to collapse not cohesion.
The illusion that large-scale immigration is sustainable in a liberal society is laughable when those, arriving in great numbers, do not share nor respect its underlying values. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote of the empire: “They make a desert and call it peace.” The inverse is now happening in the West. We are calling it compassion, but we are sowing disunity.
Small, unassimilated minorities are exerting outsized influence, particularly when the majority is told its traditions are bigoted and hateful. In France, Sweden, Belgium, and Germany, police no-go zones, honor killings, Islamist preaching, and gender segregation are common features of neighborhoods that feel far removed from their nations’ founding ideals.