Busting immigration myths

Today we can safely say that we are witnessing one of the most brilliant manipulations between reality and perception. The rise of far Right parties has created a level of disinformation that is rising among the public, especially when it comes to immigration. 

A recent survey of 23,000 citizens of France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the UK and the US is proof of just that. In five of those countries, people believe the number of immigrants are three times higher than they actually are. Italians believe they account for 30 per cent of the population, when the figure is 10 per cent. 

Swedes are closest to reality: they believe immigrants account for 30 per cent, when in fact the figure is 20 per cent. Italians believe that 50 per cent of the immigrants are Muslim, when in fact they are 30 per cent; conversely, 60 per cent of the immigrants are Christians, and Italians think they are 30 per cent. More importantly, in all the six countries, citizens think that immigrants are poorer and without education or knowledge, and therefore a heavy financial burden. Italians think that 40 per cent of immigrants are jobless, when the figure is close to 10 per cent, no different from the general rate of unemployment.

In other words, facts are irrelevant. Perceptions count more.

Let us take Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel is being weakened by the immigration issue, barely escaping a revolt by her Minister of Interior, Horst Seehofer, who is the leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Merkel’s party. US President Donald Trump was glad to come to Seehofer’s help, tweeting that the people of Germany are “turning against” their government over the issue of migration, which has led to an increase in crime. The fact that Germany has witnessed a strong decrease in crime is, of course, irrelevant for someone who has made more than 3,750 false statements, over 38.187 tweets (as of July 14).

Trump is not alone in his campaign. He has allies in Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Austria’s Sebastian Kurz, Slovakia’s Peter Pellegrini and the Czech Republic’s Milos Zeman, who are all in power. This growing rise of the right is due to fake news. For some people, reality is now fake news. Trump had claimed that 2,50,000 demonstrators had kept him out of the centre of London. Later, they were found to be his supporters. You need not be only a narcissist, you also need to reverse reality. 

The question, therefore, is what has happened to people? Trump’s changing the intention of 2,50,000 demonstrators would once have attracted ridicule. Not now: for Trump’s supporters, his tweets are undisputed truth.

The fact of the matter is, as a survey released in June last year shows, that the concept of democracy itself is in danger. The survey asked more than 3,000 scholars and country experts to evaluate each of the 178 countries on the quality of core features of democracy. At the end of 2016, most people lived in democracies. Since then, one-third of the world population, have gone through “autocratisation”, in which a leader or group of leaders begins to limit democratic attributes and rule more unilaterally. Countries such as Russia, Brazil and the US have been affected by autocratisation. Other countries in democratic decline in the past 10 years include Congo, Turkey, Ukraine and Poland. The US fell from the 7th to 31st place in just two years. 

To counter this threat to democracy, one needs to create a robust immigration policy, to establish criteria for those that industrialised countries need to be able to remain in global competition. This will not happen. All immigrants are presented as a threat, regardless of reality. Africa’s population will double in the next few decades. Nigeria will grow to 400 million, the present population of Europe. Sixty per cent of Africa’s population is now under 25, compared with 32 per cent in the United States and 27 per cent in Europe.

Are Europeans going to machine gun the immigrants — as some xenophobes are already asking for — and decline to a region of old people, with little or no pension and a non-existent social system? So far, there are mixed indicators on how it will react. The French Parliament has eliminated the term “race” from its constitution, and the Portuguese government will give Portuguese citizenship to immigrants, who have a stable job after one year. On the other hand, the Netherlands has decided that it will refuse to allow children born to Dutch parents, enrolled with ISIS to return on the grounds that those children have been born and raised in a climate of hate and violence, and thus constitute a danger for Dutch society. 

If one looks at the facts, one will see that today the Netherlands has a population of 17.2 million people. How many such ISIS children are there? Only 145! Would it not be possible to find 145 families where those children — who have no responsibility for their situation — could forget the horrors they went through and enjoy the benefits of their nationality which, by international law, is considered non-waiverable? Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the US is separating more than 5,000 children from their immigrant parents.

Under this unprecedented face of the West, one must ask, is this the new Europe and the US that their citizens want? 

The writer is the publisher of OtherNews, adviser to INPS-IDN and to the Global Cooperation Council. He is also co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus. Views are personal.