If Democrats refuse to secure the border, they'll lose a lot more than the election

As the child of immigrants and as a person of color, Suella Braverman has license to speak hard truths about the global migration of peoples.

As a living testament to the virtues of British immigration, she grew up to be a Cabinet member in the office of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is himself the child of immigrant parents of East Indian descent.

Now it falls upon these two ethnic Britons to deal with a migration problem that is stressing not only their island nation, but all of Western Europe, the United States and the rest of the Western world.

The problem seen through wide lens is this:

The global south is poor with populations that are rapidly multiplying. The global north is rich with populations in decline. The economic imbalance has created a push northward for jobs that has grown too large to manage.

Unchecked immigration is a problem

Braverman was in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, to warn U.S. leaders that if the West does not solve its migrant problem and rewrite the rules of international immigration, it will risk losing its governments and its countries.

“(Uncontrolled immigration is an) existential challenge for the political and cultural institutions of the West,” she told the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.

“Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades,” she said.

“We are living with the consequence of that failure today. You can see it play out on the streets of cities all over Europe. From Malmo, to Paris, Brussels, to Leicester.

“If people are not able to settle in our countries, and start to think of themselves as British, American, French, or German, then something is going badly wrong.”

Braverman is mocked, but she's right

Braverman is the British home secretary, equivalent of our secretary of Homeland Security. A Cambridge-educated lawyer, she is on the short list of Conservative Party leaders who could one day be prime minister.

“Just as it is a basic rule of history that nations which cannot defend their borders will not long survive, it is a basic rule of politics that political systems which cannot control their borders will not maintain the consent of the people, and thus not long endure,” she said.

The liberal press in Britain mocked her speech, but Europe is watching migrants multiplying on their shores and creating enormous stress in national politics.

Far-right parties are gaining influence across the continent, powered by the immigration problem and the left’s indifference to it.

Europe is already being overwhelmed

Liberal European leaders, such as French President Emmanuel Macron, are alarmed at the destabilizing effect of mass immigration. “We cannot embrace all the misery of the world,” he said.

A flotilla of boats that this month brought 11,000 North African immigrants to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, a number more than double its population, set off alarms in Western Europe.

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Lampedusa has become for many a metaphor for continental Europe, and what it will face when the next waves of immigrants grow larger, aided by internet and cellphone communications that have made relocation much easier to pull off.

Last month, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, said, “The migration crisis has not even started.”

Democrats now sound like Republicans

For those on the left who believe this is xenophobia, pay attention to Democratic Party officials who have joined the chorus.

In New York City, where Democratic Mayor Eric Adams struggles to find and maintain shelter for the 60,000 migrants who now overwhelm his city’s social services, Democrats are working to restrict the rules for who gets shelter and for how long.

Said New York’s Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, “The original premise behind the right to shelter was for homeless men on the streets. People were experiencing AIDS. Then it was expanded to families. That is the right thing to do. But never was it envisioned that this would be an unlimited universal right or obligation on the city to have to house literally the entire world.”

In Chicago, migrants are sleeping on the floors of police stations and at O’Hare International Airport waiting for shelter space to open.

“You have thousands and thousands of people trying to find asylum in the United States,” a senior adviser to Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson told Politico. “The system never anticipated this many people pursuing it.”

“Tensions within the Democratic Party are already noticeable in Chicago,” reports Politico, “where predominantly Black communities are pushing back at the resources being devoted to new arrivals while those who have long been unhoused are still seeking help.”

Secure the border, strengthen laws now

As U.K. Home Secretary Braverman said on Tuesday, “We have created a system of almost infinite supply, incentivizing millions of people to try their luck, knowing full well that we have no capacity to meet more than a fraction of demand.”

We can take first steps to solving the problem by reforming the United Nations 1951 convention that established the legal framework for refugees worldwide, and restrict protections to genuine refugees, she said.

Case law has weakened the U.N. framework by too generously expanding the definition of who qualifies. That needs to be tightened up.

There is an immigration crisis in America.

If we continue to ignore it and refuse to secure the border and strengthen our immigration laws there will be another crisis.

In the Democratic Party.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Immigration is a crisis that Democrats can't continue to ignore