Europeans — especially Germans — are increasingly keen on curbing immigration and are less focused on climate change, according to a study by a Danish-based think tank.
Europe has seen a sharp rise in the share of people who say that reducing immigration should be a top government priority, according to a study published Wednesday. Germany is topping the list.
At the same time, there was less desire to prioritize fighting climate change in the same countries, according to the survey commissioned by the Denmark-based Alliance of Democracies Foundation think tank.
Nearly half of German respondents put focus on migration
Since 2022, an increasing number of Europeans say their government should prioritize “reducing immigration,” rising from just under 20% to a quarter.
Meanwhile, concern about climate change was on the slide across the continent.
“In 2024, for the first time, reducing immigration is a greater priority for most Europeans than fighting climate change,” the report said.
“Nowhere is this reversal more striking than in Germany, which now leads the world with the highest share of people who want their government to focus on reducing immigration — topping all other priorities — and now nearly twice as high as fighting climate change,” the report read.
As I said elsewhere, I’m speaking as a citizen of a country who has repeatedly and severely fucked up, and continues to do so, in the hopes that I might save someone else the embarrassment of becoming a citizen of such a country. To wit, I must ask how you plan on enforcing immigration controls without law enforcement.
Oh no. You weren’t talking about border guards, you were talking about arresting people for having brown skin, or speaking different languages, for the “crime” of “eroding the culture”.
Heck I erode Italy’s culture every time I’m there simply by being convinced that pineapple on pizza is a perfectly valid thing to do. So far, none of them ever suggested arresting me.
Saying “I want cops but the difference is that this time they’re the good guys and don’t hurt anyone” doesn’t really move the needle for me. You can’t use the power of the state to use its force on people only it’s totally rainbows and sunshine this time.
Who said that? Who, here, aside from you, is talking about cops? Are those cops here in the room with us right now?
You, unless you want the law to enforce itself via magic. So, again, how are you enforcing these immigration rules without cops? Oh, wait, by calling cops “guards”? Call them the rainbow patrol for all I care, a cop by any other name is still a cop.
We do have borders, yes. We have an asylum process, we have an immigration process, we have a process for working permits, we have a naturalisation process, it’s all very well regulated and yes you can get through all of that without ever coming into contact with anyone in a uniform, short of a border guard.
What we don’t, and won’t, have is what you propose, and that is arresting American tourists on the subway for loudly speaking English. Or making it more difficult to open a Nigerian restaurant than a German one. That’s all your imagination, you’ve been told so multiple times by multiple people, and you still don’t seem to be able to understand it.
I want to be clear: I couldn’t give a crap about whether Americans get arrested. Nationalities are a construct made up by tyrants; people are people, and they deserve to not come to harm regardless of where they happened to be born.
So, it sounds like you’re proposing, what, no changes? What exactly is it, then, that people want to in order to deal with immigration, if not more cops and more aggressive laws?
There’s some room for better policies, integration courses etc but much of it is simply the east not being as experienced at integrating people combined with them still feeling fucked over by reunification.
In such a situation it then doesn’t exactly help to build a centre for 200 asylum seekers in a village with 300 inhabitants. Don’t recall the actual numbers but there’s been a couple of these “WTF would you ever do that” situations. Might even have been AfD fucks doing that they certainly aren’t above employing accelerationist tactics. Might’ve been inexperience and carelessness. Might’ve been a bureaucrat who has beef with the district administrator.
Oh: We need to re-work the history curricula. Make room for things like the Armenian genocide. Mandatory language development screening for kids and if necessary mandatory Kindergarten are already in place in a couple of states, it’s generally a good idea not just for immigrant kids, you don’t want kids to start primary school at a disadvantage. Muslims definitely should continue the process of naturalising Islam, that is, continue the move away from source-country Islams (plural) towards a domestic one. Can’t find English articles about the discussion/process within Germany right now but this might be of interest. Bit out of date it’s been taking up speed but it’s giving an overview.