A Worldwide Anti-Immigrant Wave

Asylum seekers can strain the state and spark citizen friction, with fears of cultural loss and resource diversion sometimes leading to protests or riots

By Anil Madan

Just about six weeks ago, Ireland’s Prime Minister Micheal Martin called riotous clashes of around 1,000 protesters with police in Dublin “extremely serious and very, very grave.” The demonstrations sparked by reports of an alleged sexual attack on a young girl had protesters throwing bottles and launching fireworks at the police. Some of the rioters covered their faces and carried metal bars suggesting some element of pre-planning rather than a spontaneous uprising. Two years ago, after three children were injured in a knife attack by a man allegedly from Algeria, riots broke out in Dublin as 100 protesters torched vehicles and attacked riot police. In June 2025, protests and riots broke out in towns across Northern Ireland after charges of attempted rape were brought against two teenagers. The charges against the Romanian-speaking accused were dropped several months later.

Anti-immigrant protests. Pic – Hindustan Times

A little over three and one-half months ago, anti-immigrant protesters across cities in the United Kingdom demanded that PM Keir Starmer’s government stop housing asylum seekers in hotels. Antiracism campaigners staged counter protests. Police had to intervene to prevent violence. A month later, London saw a massive anti-immigration protest as some 150,000 people marched

Coincident with the protests in Ireland, Poland saw thousands carrying Polish flags and marching in Warsaw, demanding an end to illegal migration. As with such protests in most countries, the impetus is mostly economic, but that is overlaid with xenophobia, issues of cultural identity, housing shortages and affordability, and the sense that social services are diverted to illegal immigrants.

The Netherlands has been no stranger to anti-immigrant protests. Geert Wilders, the founder of the Party for Freedom (PVV) has spouted anti-Islam and anti-immigration rhetoric and promoted nationalist themes and Eurosceptic views. With the Dutch government having collapsed, the Hague saw an anti-migration protest turn to violence with the election then about a month away. Some 1,500 protesters were involved. Some threw stones and bottles at the police and set a squad car on fire. Of interest is that the Dutch and Uganda governments have established a transit centre in Uganda. This will be a transshipment point for asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected by the Netherlands to house them until their eventual return to countries of origin.

The strain caused by the flow of immigrants across Europe and Britain has been significant. The British Home Office reported that more than 50,000 asylum seekers and migrants had crossed the English Channel in small boats and inflatable dinghies since Starmer became Prime Minister about a year and a half ago. About six months ago, there were more than 32,000 asylum seekers housed temporarily in hotels in the UK. Over 110,000 asylum applications had been filed by the end of last June. Since Britain does not give asylum seekers the right to work while their applications are pending, they become reliant on the government or family members for support including food and housing.

States across America have had to deal with similar demands on available resources and tight budgets.

The US experience is notable for the flood of immigrants that came to the US under the Biden administration. From 2021 to the end of 2024, the US recorded more than 10.8 million nationwide border crossings with 80% at the border with Mexico. In December 2023, there were over 370,000 encounters for the month. The 10+ million number compares to about 3.1 million from 2017-2020.

With the start of Trump’s second term, border encounters dropped dramatically to about 240,000 in contrast to 2+ million in the Biden years. And border encounters have dropped to historic lows — for June 2025, a “record-setting low” of 6,070 encounters, nearly 90% lower than under Biden. Note that some encounters may involve repeat attempts at border incursion.

It has been well-documented that Viktor Orban of Hungary and Donald Trump of the US, along with Geert Wilders and Nigel Farage of the UK, have used anti-migrant sentiment to gin up their political bases and win election. Orban’s statements found echoes in those of Trump and the others: “Hungary does not need a single migrant for the economy to work, or the population to sustain itself, or for the country to have a future,” Orban said. “This is why there is no need for a common European migration policy: whoever needs migrants can take them, but don’t force them on us, we don’t need them.” He added: “every single migrant poses a public security and terror risk,” and “for us migration is not a solution but a problem… not medicine but a poison, we don’t need it and won’t swallow it.”

And every incident of an immigrant’s violence against the local citizenry is liable to spur more protests and even riots against immigration as we have seen in Ireland, the UK, an across Europe. The most recent shooting of two National Guards troops by an Afghani who was resettled in the US has prompted President Trump to end approval of all immigration applications from “third world countries.”

Just this week, during a cabinet meeting, Trump said of Somali immigrants: “These are people that do nothing but complain. When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.” Vice President JD Vance banged the table in encouragement.

Trump went on to say that Somalia “stinks and we don’t want them in our country.” He described Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee and became a citizen 25 years ago, as “garbage.”

“We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Mr Trump said. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’”

The turn in sentiment in a world that favoured the right to seek asylum is understandable when the very system designed to show and extend compassion is riddled with abuse.

Abuse of asylum laws occurs when individuals enter a country and apply for asylum without meeting the legal definition of a refugee or use the asylum system as a loophole to circumvent other immigration pathways that they cannot use. Such applicants become de facto immigrants because they are accorded permission to remain in the country while their cases are adjudicated. And they are sometimes but not always allowed to work. Frequently, they become a burden on the state, and this leads to friction with citizens. Add to this the fear of loss of cultural identity resentment over diversion of resources, and you have protests and riots.

To qualify for asylum, an applicant must show actual persecution or well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.

Mere economic hardship or generalized violence usually does not qualify. The vast majority of asylum seekers coming to the US, Britain, or European countries, are economic migrants — people leaving poverty or seeking better opportunities — who claim asylum even though economic hardship alone does not qualify for refugee status.

Compounding the process is that people have the right to apply for asylum. Too often, advocates for immigrants conflate the right to apply, with the right to be granted asylum. The two are not the same.

And there is always the overriding issue of economics. Smuggling immigrants or transporting them to border points with instructions to apply for asylum is big business.

The asylum problem is far from solved. But it creates problems even for countries that can used skilled migrants to augment their labour pool. Even when the system functions properly, it is a disincentive for countries with a history of persecution and abuse to change their behaviour.

Cheerz…
Bwana

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 5 December 2025