PARIS -- It's amazing how fast the woke Western establishment turned into a bunch of bigots, by their own definition, when they sensed that their own backsides were on the line this year.
It seems like just yesterday that leaders across Western Europe and North America were advertising their openness to immigration from around the world as an integral part of their identity. Look how welcoming we are! Not like those nasty authoritarian regimes (which actually do take in a lot of migrants in some cases, just ones whose diversity contribution isn't as superficial).
Nothing says democracy and freedom like the need to jack up internal security because your diversity experiment has spun out of control.
Almost overnight, welcome mats have suddenly been getting yanked all across the Western world over the past year in reaction to a rise in populist parties winning elections. Observers could be forgiven for trying to file claims for whiplash injury. But if there's one thing that causes globalists to abandon their agenda it's an imminent threat to their own political behinds.
Perhaps the most subtle case is in the United States, where the Biden administration is estimated to have quietly carried out about as many deportations as during Trump's first presidential term, according to the Migration Policy Institute earlier this year.
Canada has imported so many global conflicts onto its own soil over the years that the spats have taken center stage in the country's political life. From clashes between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian supporters outside a recent G20 meeting in Montreal to allegations of systemic political pandering to ethnic minority groups by various lawmakers being the focus of seemingly endless "foreign interference" hearings, and even an ongoing beef between the Indian government and the Sikh Khalistani separatist group playing out violently in the streets of Canada and in Ottawa's halls of power.
Now, after cutting immigration targets and limiting temporary residency, Canada is also actively deterring asylum seekers with ads in 11 languages, including Ukrainian, Hindi, Urdu and Tamil, according to Reuters earlier this month.
No doubt the language choices are totally random. Unless you're a bigot.
Surely this sudden onset of political schizophrenia couldn't have anything to do with the fact that Canada's current housing crisis risks ejecting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's incumbent Liberals from power in next fall's scheduled election in favor of the Conservatives.
In a desperate (and failed) attempt to fend off an election defeat, Britain's Conservatives cut a deal with Rwanda to hold UK asylum seekers for processing. Others have been housed on a barge off the British coast.
Over in Europe, where populist gains in the European Union parliament and across the bloc have rattled the establishment, they're so keen to ditch migrants that the bombing hadn't even stopped in Syria amid the recent overthrow of President Bachar al-Assad before European countries were already packing Syrian migrants' bags.
Or at least they can't come here anymore, even if they may have ALREADY applied. Austria, France, Germany, Belgium and Greece announced a halt to processing any more asylum applications from Syrians. Because the very same al-Qaida jihadists that the EU still accuses on its own website of assassinations, forced religious conversions, hostage takings and suicide bombings, now self-identity as statesmen. And the leader talks like the only kind of war he's into now is social justice, saying things like, "diversity is a strength," according to Britain's Telegraph.
And he dresses like he shares a stylist with the West's girlfriend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. And apparently that's good enough for European countries to at least give him the benefit of the doubt.
These Syrian terrorists' reputational Botox hasn't even finished settling in yet and already Austria is talking about deporting Syrian refugees back home.
And if the thought of heading back and taking a chance on a country being ruled by the same jihadist leader who still has a $10 million dollar bounty on his head in Washington for palling around with ISIS head-choppers isn't enticing enough for Syrians, then maybe a cash bribe of EUR1,000 from the German government will do the trick, as some opposition politicians have suggested offering.
There's the minor detail of the U.S. and Israel still bombing Syria, but no big deal, right? It would be just like walking into a movie theater while the clean-up crew is still knee deep in the mess from the previous showing.
Germany had already started drop-kicking Afghans out of social housing back in 2022 to make room for Ukrainians, according to Foreign Policy magazine.
And back in September, the BBC reported that German officials were also looking at Britain's Rwanda deportation plan with goo-goo eyes. Meanwhile, the European Commission has recently started referring to the need to defend Europe against the "weaponization" of migration - implying that this wonderful source of multiculturalism could actually be some kind of threat.
It's almost like the West is just a giant hotel now with suddenly no vacancy. Maybe if our genius leaders had availed themselves of the exit ramp that their own citizens have been screaming at them to take from the backseat for years, rather than accusing populists of spreading fake news about immigration, then they wouldn't currently be facing such a brutal mugging by reality.
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