International Migrants Day arrives each year like an inconvenient mirror, held up to societies that prefer slogans to self-examination. It asks a simple question that many political movements now desperately avoid: who gets to belong, and on what terms? In an era shaped by Donald Trump, MAGA politics, and the emboldening of the far right across Europe, migration has stopped being discussed as a human reality and has been recast as an existential threat. This shift is not accidental. It is strategic, emotional, and deeply revealing.
Trump did not invent hostility toward migrants, but he perfected its branding. He turned fear into a campaign logo and cruelty into proof of strength. Walls, bans, cages, and deportation flights were never just policies; they were performances. MAGA politics thrives on the idea that the nation is under siege, that decline has a foreign accent, and that complexity can be solved with brute exclusion. Migrants, stripped of individual stories, became a convenient symbol of everything supposedly “wrong” with the country.
What is striking is how easily this script crossed the Atlantic. From Italy to France, from Germany to the Netherlands, far-right parties have learned that migration is the fastest route to relevance. It bypasses economic nuance and historical responsibility and speaks directly to anxiety. Declining wages, housing shortages, stretched public services, and cultural change are all laid at the feet of newcomers. The message is seductive because it is simple, and it is powerful because it is false.
International Migrants Day exposes the gap between political theater and lived reality. Migrants are not abstractions. They are workers keeping hospitals running; fields harvested, and care systems alive. They are students, parents, taxpayers, and neighbours. Europe in particular suffers from a demographic contradiction; aging societies loudly reject the very people who sustain their economies. The far right responds not by addressing this contradiction, but by denying it, insisting that purity is preferable to practicality.
The language used matters. When leaders speak of “invasions,” “floods,” or “replacement,” they deliberately dehumanize. This rhetoric is not harmless. It normalizes suspicion, justifies violence, and pushes policy toward ever harsher extremes. Trump’s legacy is not only in laws passed, but in the tone he legitimized. European counterparts have followed suit, borrowing not just talking points but moral indifference.
Yet there is a deeper hypocrisy at work. Western nations celebrate globalization when it moves capital, goods, and profit across borders, but recoil when people do the same. The freedom of movement is treated as a privilege for the wealthy and a crime for the desperate. International Migrants Day challenges this double standard by reminding us that migration is not an anomaly; it is a constant of human history. Borders are political inventions, not moral absolutes.
The far right frames itself as the defender of culture, but culture is not a museum exhibit. It is dynamic, shaped by interaction and exchange. The idea that societies were once static, homogenous, and harmonious is a fantasy sold to those fearful of change. Migrants do not erase identity; they reshape it, as generations before them have done. The real threat to democratic culture is not diversity, but authoritarianism dressed up as nostalgia.
Opinion journalism must be honest about discomfort. Migration brings challenges. Integration requires investment, planning, and empathy. Ignoring these realities fuels resentment. But exploiting them for votes is far worse. MAGA politics and Europe’s far right offer anger instead of solutions, scapegoats instead of policy. They promise control while delivering division.
International Migrants Day is not about sanctimony or open borders without debate. It is about refusing to surrender humanity to fear. It asks whether democracies can hold complexity without collapsing into cruelty. The test is not how strongly we defend borders, but how firmly we defend values.
History will remember this period not for the number of walls built, but for the choices made when fear was loud and compassion was inconvenient. The question remains whether we will look into the mirror this day provides, or smash it and applaud the sound.
For Europe especially, the danger is normalisation. What once shocked now barely registers. Policies that would have ended careers a decade ago are defended as “realism.” This slow erosion is how democracies hollow themselves out. When cruelty becomes administrative routine and exclusion becomes patriotic duty, something fundamental is lost. Migrants become the first target, but rarely the last. The political cost is measured later, usually when repair is hardest and trust has already vanished.
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