Migrants disembark the Italy's coastguard ship Diciotti at the port of Catania

La izquierda europea gira a la derecha en temas migratorios

Jun 19, 2018 Michael Bröning

BERLÍN – La izquierda tradicional europea enfrenta una amenaza de extinción. En menos de dos años, los partidos socialdemócratas del continente sufrieron derrotas históricas en Francia, Países Bajos, Alemania e Italia. En un continente donde la competencia entre partidos de centroderecha y centroizquierda era lo habitual, el colapso de la izquierda puede traer profundas consecuencias que exceden los intereses particulares de los partidos.

La declinación de la izquierda tiene detrás de sí muchos factores, entre ellos la disolución de la clase trabajadora tradicional. Pero una de las razones más importantes es dura y simple: los votantes europeos se oponen cada vez más a la inmigración, y no confían en que la izquierda le ponga límites.

Frente a un ingreso sostenido de refugiados y migrantes (sobre todo desde Medio Oriente y África), los votantes europeos han transformado una serie de elecciones recientes en referendos populares sobre la inmigración. Los movimientos populistas de derecha supieron explotar los miedos de los votantes de clase obrera, convenciéndolos de que los partidos laboristas tradicionales permitirán un ingreso prácticamente irrestricto de inmigrantes.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 18 Comments on this article

Elizabeth Pula Jun 20, 2018

The leadership of the G20 should consider a proposal that Saudi Arabia put the citizens of Saudi Arabia to work on a project to support the citizens of Syria and other Muslim nations to rebuilding and reorganizing the political and social infrastructures of Muslim nations. Then the project teams of Muslims can lead the Muslim immigrants back to their original homelands, with renewed social and employment options within Muslim Nations.
That proposal would be a positive effort that can be supported by Muslim religious leadership in the rebuilding of Mosques in Muslim nations, that have been destroyed by whomever.
Then, if Muslim citizens want to travel into other parts of the world, they can use their passports, follow normal international processes of obtaining visas, or certified employment opportunities, and show proof of funds for a specific amount of time to visit in a foreign nation, and return to their own verified nations of citizenship.
- Elizabeth Pula Jun 20, 2018
  
  Check out this link from BLOOMBERG-https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-20/workers-paid-to-do-nothing-a-ghost-army-that-haunts-gulf-rulers
  Perhaps the labor markets for Muslim citizens can be re-established to resemble some sort of equality rather than extremes of wealth and poverty within the Muslim nations worldwide. Perhaps the youth of the nations can find positive outlets to help one another rather than disrupting the social infrastructures of the nations that they don't like at all anyway.
  - Elizabeth Pula Jun 20, 2018
    
    The leadership of Muslim Nations working together with focused leadership from Saudi Arabia should be able to resolve the economic problems, and physical infrastructure problems within their independent national boundaries for Muslim citizens worldwide. These men are not helpless creatures floundering in any swamp anywhere.
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Peter Schaeffer Jun 20, 2018

Left parties have to choose between "alienating cosmopolitan supporters" and "facing the threat of extinction". In most countries (including the USA), the cosmopolitan elites rule the media, courts, academia, liberal/left parties. However, they can't stop voters from removing them from office.

The people don't want mass immigration. The elites do. Until the elites either change course or are evicted from power, nothing will change.
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j. von Hettlingen Jun 19, 2018

Michael Bröning decries centre-left parties that bow to political pressure, and adopt the far-right groups’ hard stance on refugees and migrants who seek asylum in Europe. He says “they should pursue a three-pronged strategy that can be popular without being populist.”
In recent years centre-left parties have been in retreat across much of Europe after losing elections in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, etc. more comprehensively than ever before. Their voters say these parties no longer offer an agenda they used to have, because centre-right parties have hijacked their political ideas, leaving the line between left and right blurred. They are also fragmenting at the very moment when far-right populists are making inroads.
There have been a major social and economic upheaval throughout Europe over the past 30 years. Hundreds of thousands of jobs in traditional heavy industries like steel-making, coal-mining and ship-building have gone, and with them the central role of trades unions and their political allies. Observers say centre-left parties have been suffering from a “deficit of ideas,” unable to respond to the changes and challenge as the more flexible centre-right parties do.
Besides, over the past decade centre-left parties in Europe had been unable to decide whether to “disown or embrace” the electoral strategies which had served them so well during the 1990, said ex-Labour foreign secretary, David Milliband in 2011. Issues they had to address included immigration - in which the centre-left was regarded as "suspect at best and guilty at worst" - the balance between tax and spending and how to stimulate economic growth and job creation beyond direct state control.
In an effort to regain popular support, centre-left parties are now “following in nationalist right's footsteps.” European voters “are increasingly opposed to immigration, and do not trust the left to limit it.” Many people on the left embrace liberal, humanitarian values and feel a sense of moral responsibility towards the weak and vulnerable, especially those who flee war and persecution. They are sympathetic to an open-border migration policy, while rejecting strident chauvinism.
While it is our duty to save human lives and help refugees, it’s the debate on economic migrants that divides public opinion. Critics point out that centre-left parties in the affluent West had had generous immigration policy in the past. By letting in a large number of economic migrants, they not only created conflict with the poorer people at home but also helped slow down the development of the poor countries, which rely on exporting people to rich countries and benefit from their remittances. It also encourages the young and educated people in poor countries, who do not want to wait the several generations it might take for their country to become rich, stable and liberal.
The author urges centre-left parties to not “copy the crude nativist recipes of the radical right, which would not only be economically counterproductive, but would also fly in the face of progressive values, alienating cosmopolitan supporters.” They should “strike a balance between national and international solidarity with a three-pronged strategy comprising effective limits on immigration, a focus on integration, and humanitarian efforts to ease large-scale human suffering.”
It remains to be seen whether this strategy would offer “real, forward-thinking, and morally sustainable solutions that are not populist, but certainly can be popular.” While taking care of those who seek refuge or better economic opportunities, rich countries can become over-dependent on immigration, which then reduces the incentive to improve the training or work ethic of hard-to-employ native citizens. Lacking skills to compete in the job market, they are the ones who come to resent migrants and reject global trade and open borders, falling prey to populist rhetoric. Poorer countries can become over-dependent on emigration, which provides a flow of hardcash from abroad, but slows their own economic development and productivity.
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david belay Jun 19, 2018

Curiously the author does not mention M5S without which there would be no coalition with the Lega! While M5S also surfed the anti-immigration wave, it is first and foremost an anti-austerity party, created in reaction to the self-defeating economic policies of the eurozone. But the author dismisses any economic and social causes of the problem. As everybody knows (in Germany) the eurozone economic management is a huge success so that can't possibly explain anything.
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david belay Jun 19, 2018

Safe third countries like Afghanistan and Libya where the West has been dropping its bombs.
- Peter Schaeffer Jun 20, 2018
  
  I guess we need to stop bombing Bangladesh and Nigeria too. Both countries have produced huge numbers of "refugees" of late. Every analysis shows that the vast majority of "refugees" are fake. They are just economic migrants using "refugee" as a magic word to jump borders.
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david belay Jun 19, 2018

And you think they had any credibility? Have they not been in the previous coalition governement? The great legacy of Schöder is people rummaging through trash bins to extract empty bottles. That's what I see everyday in the streets and also what I read in the news. http://www.dw.com/en/the-ticking-timebomb-of-german-poverty/a-41379481
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david belay Jun 19, 2018

See my comment below but praising Macron and Trudeau is I think a good litmus test for political imposture.
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david belay Jun 19, 2018

If they are not based on racism and xenophobia, and more generally on prejudices, what are they based on? How do you explain the fact that the far-right scores higher in regions where there are fewer foreigners?
- Peter Schaeffer Jun 20, 2018
  
  A few notes that may be helpful here from the USA.
  
  1. Putnam (Harvard) has found that "diversity" is strongly correlated with societal weakness. See "The downside of diversity - A Harvard political scientist finds that diversity hurts civic life. What happens when a liberal scholar unearths an inconvenient truth?". To state this directly, "intergroup contact" has strong negative consequences.
  
  2. In the U.S. a selection mechanism is clearly at work. Those who profit from mass immigration stay. Those who loose, leave. The higher levels of support for mass immigration in areas with mass immigration reflects (too some degree) an economic sorting process.
  
  3. In the U.S. a clear censorship mechanism is at work. In areas more impacted by mass immigration, all contrary sentiment is repressed. For example, California's public schools have been devastated by mass immigration. However, no one dares to say any such thing in public.
  
  4. The supporters of mass immigration are typically the "gated community" crowd. Of course, they support what profits them and hurts everyone else.
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- david belay Jun 19, 2018
  
  Also that may play a role too: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/13/populist-talkshows-fuel-rise-of-far-right-german-tv-bosses-told
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david belay Jun 19, 2018

This paragraph is also telling. Economy comes first, progressive values second but mostly because that would "alienate cosmopolitan supporters". The author's idealogical malleability is breathtaking.
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david belay Jun 19, 2018

"a balance between national and international solidarity" : is one necessary at the expense of the other? In the author's world view, yes, I guess so, since the world is essentially seen as a zero-sum game. When it comes to national solidarity I would definitely not trust the German social democrats, with or without migrants. After all, they passed the infamous Harz IV laws.
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david belay Jun 19, 2018

This is interesting: when voters want to kick out migrants, their demands should be respected. When those same voters want to end austerity and other socially regressive policies, this is not an option. Remember how Mattarella vetoed the appointment of Savona just a few weeks ago? How the socialists in Portugal had to promise they would respect the deficit targets to be able to form a government? How the Greece was crushed in 2015? I wonder what your standards of moral acceptability are but I suspect they are very loose.
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Paul Akhurst Jun 19, 2018

14 paragraphs before getting to the one paragraph that addresses policy. That is not the way to convince anyone that the policy will work.
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david belay Jun 19, 2018

Oh boy, another of those worthless centrist columns, written by an apologist of the two impostors Macron and Trudeau (you know the one who wants to build pipelines to pump as much CO2 as possible in the atmosphere). Granted, Macron is good at making grand statements and speeches. But if you are to write an opinion piece, you should do your homework before.

France has basically closed its borders. This was already bad with Hollande but got even worse with Macron. Its new immigration law has been denounced by Amnesty. France's racist cops are anyway constantly breaking the law at the Italian border, as has been reported in the Guardian, on Mediapart, etc.

This is not what I would call a balanced approach. Even though the French economy, thanks to the Eurozone idiotic policies, is not doing that great, it is surely doing better than Italy and it is obvious that it should welcome more migrants than Italy, not less. Thus Macron's policy, whatever he says, is exacerbating the problem and is largely responsible for the Lega's success in Italy. George Soros rightly pointed that out here on project syndicate.

Also, take a look at what his Interior minister has been saying for months. Many of his statements have an uncanny similarity with those of... Marine LePen. Far from undercutting the far-right, Macron and his government bolster it by legitimizing the anti-migrant rhetoric.
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