The populist immigration circus

Across the West, a wave of parties branded “far-right,” “xenophobic,” and “nativist” is on the rise. Their entire appeal rests on one promise: reversing the sorry state of immigration. But even this is largely a fiction — carefully curated by a hostile press and, funnily enough, by the parties themselves. They are far less anti-migrant than either claims. What follows is a tour of the vast chasm between their spittle-flecked immigration rhetoric and their groveling record. In Rome, as you may know, Giorgia Meloni presides over the most prominent hard-right anti-migrant government in modern Italian history. In the late 2010s, she came out swinging with great-replacement rhetoric: there is, she warned, a “plan for ethnic substitution in Italy.” By now, you may be picturing some long-lost Mrs. Mussolini. Recommended Stories Curiously, under Meloni’s fearsome fascist rule, the foreign share of the population rose from 8.9% in 2024, to a record 9.4% in 2026. That’s after a record 196,000 people were naturalized out of the count entirely. Her own government has now just authorized nearly half a million non-EU work visas for 2026 through 2028. But surely there is a difference between legal and illegal immigration? Not here. Meloni spent her campaign vowing to end illegal migration by boat, roughly 15% of arrivals, arguing that they carry problematic visitors, mostly from the Middle East and Africa. But look at whom her legal immigration has prioritized: Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Tunisia. Bangladesh is both the single largest source of boat arrivals and, inexplicably, the nationality her government has imported the most by visa. She quietly justified this by pointing to Italy’s aging population, but importing non-Italians to fix this demographic problem is the very “replacement” she had just finished warning about. It’s all very contradictory. But is there at least some intense vetting? Wrong again: allocation isn’t made on merit, but by lottery. And because this is Italy, the lottery is gamed by organized crime: shell companies grab slots and sell them, migrants pay up to €8,000 for jobs that don’t exist, then fall into illegal status. Of 146,850 entries authorized in 2024, under 17% ever became permits. In 2025, under 8. This analysis can be run on any Western country governed by “mass-deporting” “fascists” — similar results will be obtained. Even supposedly brutal immigration regimes like Poland, Hungary, and—yes—Trump’s America, conform. In Poland, the Law and Justice party took power on strident anti-immigration rhetoric, and then presided over the highest immigration in Polish history. Viktor Orbán, in 2022, declared that Hungarians “do not want to become peoples of mixed race”—a line his adviser of twenty years quit over, calling it “worthy of Goebbels.” Around the same time, he imported some hundred thousand guest workers from the Philippines, Vietnam, and Central Asia. On this side of the pond, President Donald Trump is on track to empty the country of illegal immigrants in roughly 30 years. And the promised million deportations a year? That would take 2,739 removals a day, and he is running at fewer than half that. Not to mention that all of this is executive action. Trump held the House, the Senate, and the White House — and passed no durable immigration. He and Congress shoveled a historic quarter-trillion dollars into ICE and Border Patrol, but this dries up by 2029, and depends entirely on the people and laws enforcing it. As the curtains are pulled back and the record is laid bare, we realize it was mostly fugazi. Perhaps you already realized it. How did this happen? And why everywhere — is Meloni part of the grand ethnic replacement she warns about? Unlikely. The blonde hair is dyed, and I suspect she is just as Sardinian Italian as she claims. There are more plausible explanations. The first thing to note is that to control immigration, in our age, a leader must jump over hurdles, squeeze through hoops, and otherwise contort themselves into shapes they, “conservatives,” weren’t built for. Take Trump in 2025: he is handed the baton — his mandate. Almost immediately, he’s jumping hurdles. Armies of lawyers wait to sue the instant he moves on immigration. Even the Supreme Court froze the Alien Enemies Act, seven to two, with all three of his own appointees voting against him. The cities, of course, won’t help. Sanctuary jurisdictions simply refuse to cooperate. His own house is not much better: the officers and judges who actually run the deportation machine are career civil servants. Some obstacles are more ephemeral, but no less real: public opinion, the press, the academy, societal norms. You can technically crash through these — consult any of Trump’s recent media appearances for a sample — and your base may love it, or they may also be mortified. Ultimately, the biggest problem is that the track is circular. Whatever ground Trump does gain, he gains mostly via executive orders, all waiting to be undone by the next president’s signature. He could run a perfect lap — deport lawfully, seal the border, write reasonable immigration policy (whatever this means to you) — and still change nothing structurally. Indeed, Trump’s success at the border has been impressive, far better than anything his European counterparts are up to. But still, new runners will line up and casually walk his progress back. They could, and they may, swing the border wide open. And of course, when they run, they won’t face the hurdles he did — the institutions, the bureaucracy, the courts, the status quo will all run with them. One may object that there are “no permanent solutions in Washington.” That’s true of anything won at the ballot box, which future ballots can undo. But the left’s hold on immigration is clearly not electoral. Setting aside Biden’s eight million guests — now fully baked into the demographic cake — the next Biden may roll out the welcome mat to another 8, or 10, or 20 million new friends. The system is set up to make this possible and easy. The most the right will do, if it manages to retake power (which is exponentially more difficult the more you naturalize), is strain to hold the line. The left has done an even better job of this in Europe. Head back to Meloni’s Italy, where she and her party have won and are building their flagship deterrent: offshore detention centers in Albania to process migrants before they reach Italy (think Ellis Island, but the default answer is “no”). Italian magistrates froze this plan, and the European Court of Justice decisively backed them. Here is a prime minister with a national mandate and abundant support, defeated by judges in Luxembourg whom Italian voters have never heard of. This is not to cry foul, only to show that real control would take considerable systemic change and perhaps a touch of calculated defiance — neither of which interests today’s right. The proverbial arena is packed, so how in the world do they get away with this? The spectators certainly care; they tell pollsters, again and again, that immigration is among the issues they care about most. But they are also not paying very close attention to the score. Italians guess that 30% of their country is foreign-born; it’s 7. Americans put their Muslim share at 14%; it’s about 1. The issue is not strictly over-estimation. Asked how many migrants arrived in Britain in a year, the average Briton guessed 70,000 — versus a real, gross figure 17 times higher. So face it: the voter knows essentially nothing about immigration in the abstract. He knows he is tired of something. He is not, in any real sense, watching the race — the rules are arcane, the scoring is opaque, and anyway, oh, look, Trump just made fun of Somalis again. Normal people, I hope, do not pore over deportation spreadsheets. Because immigration reform requires meaningful regime change, and because the audience isn’t really auditing, populist