How Western National Elections Have Made Migration the Focal Point of Democratic Futures

The topic of migration has become an area of social tension that plays a central role for politicians and their election campaigns. Our advocacy team analyses three examples from past and upcoming elections and the influence of the discourse surrounding the subject of migration.

Over the past year, elections in the US, UK, and France brought relevant discussions about the future of Western liberal democracies to the forefront. This has been exacerbated by recent developments in Canada and Germany, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announcing his resignation from office and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s dissolution of his three-party coalition government. When a collaboration of left-leaning parties was able to halt the emergence of a far-right national government,  the “French Rally”, in France and Germany’s Christian Democratic Party (CDU) attempted, and partially succeeded, to form Parliamentary majorities with votes from the extreme right-wing, ‘Alternative for Germany’ (AfD), public consensus among Centrist and Liberal forces solidified. Western countries are currently fighting for a democratic future and against the rise of fascism. Underlining these political developments related to immigration is the common denominator of us-versus-them rhetoric, as well as the unregulated proliferation of anti-migrant disinformation on social media platforms.

This post examines standout policies, proposed and currently enforced, by Donald Trump’s newly elected Republican Party government in the US and the UK’s first-time Labour Party cabinet, since 2010, under Keir Starmer. Further, it questions what can be expected with the predicted electoral win of Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Party in the upcoming German national election. This analysis highlights the onset of a new age of anti-immigration politics in various Western countries that heavily targets existing institutional protections that have historically supported people on the move. Ultimately, this analysis calls for radical approaches that do not allow for crossovers among far-right and Liberal migration politics.

“Trump 2.0”: A militarized anti-immigration campaign

Leading up to the 2024 US presidential election, immigration was in the top three of voter concerns. Promising to eradicate “migrant crime” and execute mass deportations to “benefit the economy,” despite substantial resources debunking these claims,  secured Trump both the electoral and popular vote as well as the presidency. In his  inauguration speech, he dedicated a significant portion to addressing migration concerns and security at the country's Southern border. Disregarding typical political norms, the president immediately declared a national emergency at the Southern border upon being sworn into office, deploying troops and moving to arrest hundreds of undocumented migrants with criminal histories. After announcing a series of executive orders, it became clear that the US government under Trump aims to redefine American immigration policy and permanently alter the human right to asylum. Trump’s “America First” plan has an overwhelming scope of impact, affecting everyone from children born on US soil with parents who have temporary protected status (TPS), to individuals who have waited for months in dangerous conditions at the US southern border for an asylum appointment. Of the over 21 executive orders, what has already been implemented aims to criminalize all undocumented migrants, paving the way for mass deportations and the effective sealing of national borders.

From his first day in office, Trump ordered the expansion of expedited removal, requiring non-citizens to register themselves and their fingerprints with the US government. This legalizes the chance for individuals to be deported without the right to a court hearing, as failure to register subjects them to criminal penalties. Having expanded the powers of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to state and local police, municipalities are now allowed to enforce federal immigration law and conduct raids in sensitive areas such as schools, hospitals and churches. Additionally, Trump made immediate moves directed toward the “criminal invasion” of the US southern border: As of January 20, the Department of Homeland Security disabled the CBP One app – an integral tool which assisted with scheduling asylum appointments at the country’s points of entry. By suspending the last remaining legal pathway for individuals seeking humanitarian protection, there are no longer regular means of entry to the country for migrants and refugees, making the right to asylum as we know it obsolete. 

Accompanying immediate increases in deportations and border security is a plan to dismantle various existing legal protections for migrants with protected status who are already on U.S. soil. This particularly affects the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHNV) Program. If implemented, one million existing Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and parole programs are at risk of being revoked, classifying a large number of people legally in the US as immediately deportable. 

The UK’s Labour Government: Change, But Not at the Border

For fourteen years, the UK was governed by the Conservative (Tory) Party. After five prime ministers, four election cycles, and two UK-wide referendums, the Labour Party won the UK’s general elections on the 4th of July 2024. In recent history, they have positioned themselves as the more left-leaning opposition to the Conservative Party. With a greater outward emphasis on social welfare and inclusionary policies, the first page of the Labour Party’s 2024 pre-election agenda has one word written in bold: Change. On the surface, this seems to be a necessary shift, as it is undisputed that the Party inherited a country left in catastrophic conditions. Since the first of the Tories’ consecutive electoral wins in 2010, the cost of living crisis has become the most prominent issue in England and Wales, with affordable housing, general satisfaction with public health insurance and faith in the judicial system being in stark decline, while poverty levels and food bank reliance have peaked.

Yet severe doubts have arisen on whether the Labour Party’s promise of “change” will apply to the country’s consistent course of anti-immigration politics. The Party’s manifesto tackles issues of economic growth, green energy transition, and national healthcare, with its first point being titled “Strong Foundations.” Under this misleading headline, it quickly becomes clear that national security and a strict border policy are its primary concerns. Starmer’s cabinet promises a new Border Security Command “with hundreds of new investigators, intelligence officers, and cross-border police officers.” While the previous government’s infamous “Rwanda scheme,” designed to outsource domestic asylum-seeking processes to facilities in Rwanda, was officially abandoned, the Home Secretary announced in July 2024 that flight planning for Rwanda was to be replaced, with the aim of “returning foreign criminals and immigration offenders who have no right to remain.” This was then implemented by deporting 46 persons to Vietnam and Timor-Leste using previously planned transportation logistics of re-routing asylum-seekers to Rwanda.

In the following month, the danger of right-wing extremist organizing resurfaced as far-right riots wreaked havoc in numerous cities across the UK. With the English Channel becoming the focal point of debates around migration politics, exemplified by ex-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s “Stop the Boats” slogan, the term has since been adopted by right-wing extremists. During the summer riots, large mobs targeted mosques, set fire to asylum-seeker accommodations, and engaged in violent manhunts on the streets. Only one month after the violent riots, news outlets reported a record-high of deaths among people attempting small-boat crossings of the English Channel. According to humanitarian organizations, these were a direct result of heavy policing on France’s coastline and the absence of a UK-led introduction of safe-passage policies. 

Germany: The CDU’s Attempts to Weaken the "Firewall"

On January 29th, the Christian Democratic Party submitted two proposals to the German parliament, intending to crack down on migration and pursue stricter border security. Both proposals were non-binding calls to the Social Democratic-led coalition, whose dissolution was announced towards the end of 2024. As a result, they have been widely perceived as part of the Party’s electoral campaign for the upcoming national election, for which polls predict Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democratic Party as Germany’s potential new chancellor. The following is an overview of the policy drafts:

The first motion passed in parliament with a narrow majority – including votes from the AfD parliamentary group – is a plan containing five bullet points for the “securing of borders and the end to illegal migration.” The plan highlights permanent border control, a strict rejection policy for attempts at irregular border crossing (including individuals who have a prospect of being granted asylum), and the immediate incarceration of those who are being considered for deportation without temporal limits in place. This enables mass-deportations to Syria and Afghanistan, regions which are still considered unsafe at the international level. 

The second legislative outline, which was recently rejected in parliament by a small margin, primarily concerns internal security matters related to immigration policy. Crucially, it limits the practice of family reunification for those officially deemed in need of protection, namely individuals who may not have received asylum status but are allowed to remain in the country for other reasons. It additionally echoes long-standing, mainstream demands for strengthening FRONTEX mechanisms, as well as a roll-back on social welfare policies for migrants and refugees who have yet to be granted asylum. Notably, this draft proposes the revocation of German citizenship for individuals carrying dual citizenship with criminal histories at the felony level.

On January 31st, the German parliament also conducted a final vote on a draft bill named the “Influx Limitation Act,” containing many aspects of the previously mentioned proposals. While the draft bill was again marginally rejected, the willingness of CDU to form a majority with votes from the AfD signifies a concerning shift in the country’s political norms. Previously maintaining a “firewall” where parties abstained from working with the far-right, the decision by CDU to accept majority formations with AfD votes sparked widespread protests across the country, with hundreds of thousands of people taking part in demonstrations in many cities. Merz’s reactions to strong criticism of his recent actions fell flat, with his Party adding a last-minute paragraph to their policy draft which targeted the AfD for its use of conspiracy theories and anti-EU sentiment. This attempt to insist on politically opposing the AfD while actively counting on their votes in parliament serves at best as a desperate and empty gesture, and at worst as a clear signal for his pre-election campaign. 

A new age of anti-immigration policies

These political developments signal a new direction of right-wing anti-immigration politics. In both cases, political leaders not only continue to enforce policies of strict border security but seek to attack the last remaining institutional frameworks that protect human- and citizen-rights. This is reflected in both the multi-level US restrictions on legal asylum-seeking processes, as well as Friedrich Merz’s proposed legislative outlines to prohibit officially recognized means of seeking documentation upon entering Germany. Importantly, the Christian Democratic Party’s proposals directly negate the core of Europe’s historical Schengen Agreement, legalizing tactics even more severe than the EU’s existing “Fortress Europe” approach. In the event such policies have a future in any EU-member state, the very existence of the Union’s foundation will be rendered obsolete.

Merz’s proposal to radically restructure the legal federal framework of German citizenship is a further testament to this new era of institutional dismantling, clearly showing the involvement of the Christian Democratic Party in the alt-rights “master plan” of “remigration,” exposed by investigative journalists last year in a now widely-known report. The plan would alter German citizenship laws to pursue the restructuring of the country’s demographic along the lines of right-wing ideologies that invoke racial, cultural and ethnic parameters to German citizenry.

Emboldened right-wing sentiments are equally present in the US as Trump aims to restructure who is allowed to obtain the “American citizen” title. In the past week alone, the call for mass deportations has incentivized racial profiling throughout the country, as people of colour – including Indigenous peoples in the country’s Southwest – are detained for long periods in an attempt to fulfil enforced daily deportation quotas. Moving forward, the federal government has been directed to design a new refugee process that selects only refugees who will be able to “assimilate into the US,” with the Secretary of State directed to provide recommendations to limit visa programs for those who don’t support “specific ideological values.” Through this language alone, it becomes apparent that the promise of border security comes with much larger and more dangerous ideas. 

The Liberal Response: A Hollow Alternative 

Recent political developments across Western economic power-states have become increasingly complicated, with a noticeable shift towards utilizing migrants and asylum-seekers as a scapegoat for societal issues. The 2024  US and UK elections, as well as pre-election debates in Canada and Germany, demonstrate an explicit plan to introduce a new era of anti-immigration politics. This ultimately signals the emergence of a new globalized far-right, detrimentally impacting the foundations of both local and international institutions which protect human- and citizen rights. Under the premise of securing borders, these policies are a dangerous shift towards the normalization of policing and profiling, acting in favour of ideologies which unmistakably divide along supposed ethnic and cultural lines. But the alternative leading political figures cannot remain those who act as a softer version of alt-right hardliners.

As the fight against the rise of fascism grows louder, what is absent is a clear and distinct vision in politics which distances itself from the sentiments of the far-right. Across the West, political campaigns by liberal parties positioning themselves as the opposition to continuously popular far-right forces have promised and successfully implemented stricter border policies. The long-term strategy of the UK Labour Party seems to co-opt right-wing rhetoric, speaking of plans to “smash the gangs to stop these crossings,” which can be seen as a mere modification to the “stop the boats” campaign. A mere month before the summer riots, Starmer had singled out the UK’s Bangladeshi community in a short speech of his plan to deport people back to their countries of origin. In the US, for over a decade, both liberal and conservative administrations have continued to restrict asylum-seeking processes. Under the former Biden Administration, unauthorized border crossers were being increasingly subjected to a restrictive and demanding immigration process. During her final speech before the US national elections, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate Kamala Harris spoke of her extensive professional experience in law enforcement to highlight the importance of border security and promoted what she called “the strongest border bill in decades,” designed in collaboration with Republican politicians and strongly endorsed by Border Patrol agencies. Similarly, while Germany’s left-leaning and centrist forces react to the novelty of a parliamentary party openly collaborating with the AfD, calling out the tear-down of the “firewall” against the far-right, many of these forces have been dually complicit in politics surrounding mass deportations and criminalization tactics. Only a year before dissolving his government, Social Democratic Party leader and soon-to-be ex-Chancellor Scholz proudly declared that his coalition would deport people en masse, posing for the stylized headline on the cover of “SPIEGEL“ magazine. In principle, this political decision-making sets a clear direction towards securitization and a disregard for human- and citizen rights. 

Across multiple countries, we have identified a trend wherein the general dissatisfaction of citizens with rising costs and lack of services goes hand-in-hand with increased anti-migrant sentiments. Instead of developing a more comprehensive immigration policy, this dissatisfaction finds an easy breeding ground in the migration debate, opening up an entry point for far-right agendas. With the federal election in Germany growing closer, it must be emphasized that the hopes of mainstream liberal politicians to win over potential and real far-right votes through this strategy are misguided. Numerous studies by political scientists have demonstrated that in the long term, co-opting and incorporating far-right narratives and policies does not have the desired effect of redirecting this particular voter base. On the contrary, those who are susceptible to such rhetoric will vote for the party which enforces them in full, growing tired of watching liberal politicians playing games of setting and resetting the “last resort” – or “firewall” – by which they position themselves against the far right.