Can Europe Tighten Up on Asylum?

That was some shot Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth took at Europe during the recent annual D-Day anniversary  celebration . Awkwardly analogizing the Allies’ storming of Normandy on June 6, 1944, to the “invasion” of European beaches today by men in boats with “dangerous ideologies,” Hegseth wondered aloud about when “European capitals” would stop the flow of migrants. “Or is it too late?” he asked, adding: “I pray not. And I believe not.”  Hegseth’s timing was odd for another reason: the European Union actually has done something to control the flood of asylum seekers headed its way; in fact, the new measures took effect just a few days after Hegseth’s speech on June 12. There’s legitimate debate as to whether the rules—which the European Commission approved in 2024 after years of negotiation among the EU’s 26 member states—have real teeth and will work as intended. And time to limit the political destabilization mass migration has wrought across Europe may indeed be running out, as recent violence in Northern Ireland over a stabbing attack by a Sudanese asylum-seeker shows. But the salient point, unacknowledged by Hegseth, is that the EU’s new plan moves Europe’s policy in a more restrictive direction, so much so, in fact, that the main critiques have come from  human rights groups  alleging that it brings Trumpian xenophobia across the Atlantic.  In reality, the  plan  seeks to retain the core of Europe’s commitment to safe haven, by targeting asylum to those with a legitimate claim—and efficiently excluding the rest. Over time, the hope is that this will deter mass flows of bogus claimants who hope to remain in the bloc during endless adjudication, thus “breaking the business model of brutal migrant smugglers,” as the EU’s top official on migration, Magnus Brunner,  told  The Washington Post.  The plan’s  key element  is the processing of migrants at the EU’s borders, where they will be sorted into possible asylum-seekers and others immediately deportable within seven days. Asylum applicants from “safe” countries of origin—defined based on past asylum approval rates of their compatriots, including Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Kosovo, India, Morocco, Tunisia, and any EU candidate country—those who pose security risks, and those who deliberately mislead authorities, will be processed on an accelerated basis within 12 weeks and, if found ineligible, removed. At  present , some 80 percent of unsuccessful asylum-seekers facing deportation remain in the EU, living without valid documents, according to official data. The new plan tries to track them better by  collecting and sharing  biometric data on every migrant that enters.   Separately, the European Commission is also proposing to let member states send migrants who have been denied asylum or are otherwise deportable to so-called “return hubs”—third countries outside the bloc. If this seems to resemble President Trump’s deportation deals with nations in Africa and elsewhere, well, that’s because it does.  However, the best U.S. analogy for the E.U. plan might be the asylum provisions in the bipartisan immigration  bill  co-sponsored by Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla) and Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.). That measure, admittedly stymied so far in Congress, calls for holding asylum seekers who cross the U.S.-Mexico border in “humanitarian campuses” pending accelerated—60 days or less—consideration of their applications. Those denied will be swiftly removed from the country. As in the European plan, the goal is to enable legitimate claims while ending the long procedural backlogs that incentivize phony ones.   Europe  reports  that migrant arrivals and asylum applications have been drifting downwards in the couple of years, but the influx of people from the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and Latin America that began with mass migration of Syrians in 2015 remains a critical issue—culturally, socially and, above all, politically, where it is driving the growth of populist right-wing parties, including in the EU’s core, France and Germany. The EU’s new policy could determine whether the region maintains enough stability and cohesion to deal with its even greater problems of military security and economic growth. The results could also point the way to sustainable solutions to the U.S.’s similar problems.  The post Can Europe Tighten Up on Asylum? appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI .