Can the West do Remigration? By Douglas Murray in The Free Press.
Can a country allow mass lawbreaking and retain its integrity? For almost any crime you can think of, the answer is no. No country would allow people to walk into another person’s house or let them drive on the wrong side of the road. Yet many politicians behave as if they have no choice when it comes to mass illegal immigration. It appears that even some Republicans are losing their will to deport illegal migrants and reverse the lawbreaking trend.
Their hesitation is understandable, since the public has little stomach for the reality of deportations, and the tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have turned off many would-be supporters. A Gallup poll in June found that the share of Americans who support deportations has fallen to 39 percent from a recent high of 47 percent in 2024, while the share who oppose them has risen from 51 percent to 58 percent. On cue, Republican politicians are distancing themselves from the policy, going well beyond condemnations of the worst ICE excesses. …
Mandate needed first:
Ten years ago …I spoke with politicians across the Western world about the problem, which was already roiling global politics and seemed certain to get worse. One thing struck me: No matter how “right-wing,” “far-right,” or “populist” the politicians I spoke to were, almost none had thought much about how to actually reverse mass migration. …
“How are you going to do it?” I asked. Since there was little policy forthcoming, I sketched out how I saw it happening. On day one of the new policy, federal agents would have to put illegal migrants on buses and start taking them down the country to the ports of origin. By day two, the media would have swarmed all such buses. At least one photo would emerge of a person — perhaps even a family, a woman, a child — crying as they were put on the bus. By day three, there would be protesters, and by day four the political pressure would prompt almost any self-interested government to give up the plan.
There is a moral to this story. In order to follow through, a leader must first earn an electoral mandate to carry out the deportations, devote extensive resources and planning, and prepare to take the heat. …
When Nigel Farage, leader of the UK’s Reform Party, was asked whether he approved of the removal of illegal immigrants from Britain, he dismissed the idea. Only once part of his voter base rebelled did Farage reverse that position. After all, what is the point of voting for a party like Reform, which positions itself as a bulwark against mass immigration and globalization, if it is not going to do what other parties have shrunk from doing? …
Even Trump recognizes that the challenge is immense. “It’s a very difficult thing with the courts,” he said in April 2025, noting how much success detained migrants have in using appeals to delay their removal. On a good day, ICE has managed to deport a maximum of 1,200 people, meaning it would take decades of sustained effort to remove the number of illegals who came in during Joe Biden’s presidency alone….
Uniparty goes for repeated amnesties:
Given these realities, it’s clear why politicians across the political spectrum prefer to embrace amnesty. …
All such policies inadvertently increase the likely flow of illegals in the future by suggesting that lawbreaking will be rewarded …
The people will revolt:
Yet many people in the communities most affected by the wave have begun to demand a firmer response. British villages that are about to be completely overwhelmed by the placement of illegal migrants in their neighborhoods have started holding token “referendums” to declare independence from the UK. This has happened in places like the quintessentially English village of Piddington, which has a population of 350 but is about to have 1,200 male illegal migrants placed down the road.
It is imperative to deport many of these newcomers because in no country has there been any democratic mandate for such population changes. If Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had announced in 2020 that they were about to allow 10 million people to break into America, the presidential election would have swung the other way.
Deporting illegal migrants will also be necessary as long as generous public benefits exist, as they are certain to in every Western country. You can either maintain open borders or a welfare state, but you cannot keep both. In every country in which illegal migration has happened on a large scale, the numbers of arrivals have overwhelmed social housing, social security, and the welfare systems that exist. Where illegal workers have taken up work, they have done so on the black market, undercutting the salaries acceptable to native-born or legal migrant workers. Not long ago, trade unions fiercely opposed illegal immigration on this basis, but in their alliance with the modern left, many have gotten on board with open borders to their members’ detriment. …
Assimilation is the key, but it’s slow:
Immigration can work if the volume is manageable, the speed is moderate, and the people who arrive passionately wish to integrate into the society in question. Absent all three of these things, a society will face either revolt, collapse, or both.
To describe this issue as existential to the West is to understate things. And yet one government after another continues to drop it into the “too difficult to handle” bucket. …
Gloomy prediction:
Nations burdened by mass migration won’t get serious about reversing the trend until the situation gets far worse — when constant low-scale or significant mass-scale atrocities are carried out by people who should not be in the country, and when the hearts of even the softest swing voters begin to harden. Nobody can predict when that day will come. But it will come, and the leaders who failed to address these issues will have to answer to an angry public.
Only the ruling class cannot see it.
