Every recent wave of mass migration into Western countries began in optimism and ended in tears. Immigration liberalization efforts in the United States in the form of the 2013 Gang of 8 bill and President Obama’s 2014 expansion of DACA (including Deferred Action for Parents of Americans) were stopped in their tracks by the 2014-15 wave of immigration that saw 3.1 million immigrants cross the border, about one-third of those doing so illegally. In turn, Donald Trump ran and won on a platform that would not only end DACA and step up deportations but also curtail legal immigration.
In spring of 2015, Middle Eastern and Central Asian migrants began pouring into Greece and Italy seeking entry into the European Union. By that fall, Europeans were opening their borders in response to the drowning of a 3-year-old Syrian boy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s famous declaration “Wir schaffen das” (“we can do this”). Over 2015-16, some 2.4 million people entered the European Union and requested asylum, a nearly 200 percent increase over the prior two years. Central Europeans began erecting border fences against one another. Right-wing populists entered government in Italy and Austria. The British voted to leave the European Union altogether.
And then Western governments did it all over again.