Vice President JD Vance warned European leaders in Munich earlier this month that their efforts to silence dissent over policies that have produced record-high levels of foreign-born, culturally recalcitrant migrants were undermining their security. Now, with this deep problem uppermost in their minds, German voters have defeated the center-left Social Democratic Party and turned to the center-right Christian Democrats, while the Alternative for Germany, which is further to the right, nearly doubled its support.
According to exit polls, more German voters identified “immigration” as their nation’s “most pressing problem” than any other issue. Concerns about migrants beat out the economy by 3 points, 37%-34%, while crushing worries about “climate change,” 13%, and “inflation,” 7%. More than 82% of eligible Germans voted last weekend, making this year’s turnout the highest in more than 40 years.
It was not just older voters that moved right. Among men between the ages of 18 and 24, support for the anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany tripled from 8% to 24%, while support among women in that age group tripled from 5% to 15%.
“Of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration,” Vance told Europe, “Today, almost 1 in 5 people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all-time high. And we know the situation… it didn’t materialize in a vacuum. It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent and others across the world over the span of a decade.”
In recent years, the politicians who made those decisions to open their countries’ borders to a flood of migrants have been getting pummeled when voters get the chance to express their views in elections. In Germany, Italy, Sweden, Canada, and the United States, parties of the Left have been voted out of power after failing to secure their nations’ borders. In the United Kingdom, where a center-right government recently lost, it was solely because that party, too, failed to follow through on voter wishes to reduce immigration.
Only in Denmark, has a center-left government managed to retain power, and the Danish government, unlike its counterpart in Germany, took strong action to reduce immigration.
In the U.S., in less than a month, and without any help from Congress, just by enforcing existing law, President Donald Trump has not only stopped more migrants from illegally entering the southern border but is also inducing migrants to return home.
Just by shutting down former President Joe Biden’s illegal CBP One parole program, Trump has created a “reverse flow” of migrants now heading south from the U.S. border back to Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia. Where smugglers once charged $250 a person for boat rides north past Panama’s Darien Gap, they are now charging $250 a person for boat rides in the opposite direction.
The Christian Democrats, who received 29% of the vote, have previously promised to never form a coalition government with Alternative for Germany, which received 21% of the vote. German law allows the government to spy on political parties it deems “extreme,” and the German government has been spying on Alternative for Germany for years now.
If the Christian Democrats insist on isolating Alternative for Germany, they will have no choice but to work with the party they just defeated, the Social Democrats. Forming coalition governments is always difficult, but if Christian Democrats want to build on their recent electoral success, they should make sure the Social Democrats responsible for Germany’s current immigration policies are kept out of power.