Blonde Women and Money from the Wall

The second Trump administration’s “resistance” is coalescing around the topic of immigration, but that hasn’t stopped the president from hammering the issue. He even brought his concerns about mass migration to Europe during a visit this weekend to Scotland. “On immigration, you better get your act together,” he told reporters, criticizing European leaders. “You’re not going to have Europe anymore.” Europe’s struggle between liberalism and democracy rarely strays far from that topic, as I’ve witnessed first-hand during my travels across the continent.

Bácsalmás, Hungary

I recently joined a small expedition to Hungary’s southern border with Serbia, a frontier of the European Union. Bácsalmás is an agricultural community far from tourist destinations on either side of the Serbo-Hungarian border. It should be largely untouched by the forces of globalization, except for the arbitrary post-World War I border that bisects the farmland. Fence signs in Arabic and Pashto surely were far from the minds of European statesmen who last century drew the lines on a map.

Recently, while questioning some young Afghan men intercepted at the border, our officer-guide used a translation app to learn the men wanted to come to Europe for “blonde women and money from the wall.” Further questioning revealed the latter referred to ATMs. This anecdotal episode fits with the European experience of the past quarter-century or longer, an experience that has been frustratingly slow to enter mainstream discourse. It is also a reminder that such arrivals are neither forced to migrate, nor particularly destitute. The desperately poor cannot afford the journey. (Consider migrants’ ubiquitous use of cell phones during the 2015-16 migration crisis and the enormous human-smuggler costs—estimated at €2,500 for just the leg from northern Serbia into Hungary.)

Two Pakistani smugglers were recently found dead on the Serbian side of the border. They had been fighting over control of a human-smuggling tunnel. These men have ample incentive to clash. This business generates billions of euros annually. As such, the fence signs and loudspeaker recordings in Arabic, Pashto, and Urdu, not to mention the UN-approved low-voltage fencing, surely leave more of an impression on visitors than on the smugglers. The high-tech system of aerial surveillance, sensory technology, and rapid-response infrastructure, stretching for miles into Hungary, is a different matter. As border technology improves, the smugglers adapt. They are perfectly willing to exploit children to advance their aims, garnering sympathy, fabricating “family units,” or even diverting the attention of border patrol.

By contrast, our hosts from the Hungarian border police were thoroughly decent, far from the sadistic praetorians portrayed in Western media. Bácsalmás and the surrounding towns are their homes. They appear to find fulfillment in their contributions to the homeland. They seem to perceive their work apolitically. The older guards recall an era when they worked to prevent people from leaving the country. When I made a flippant remark about Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s border policies in Poland, our guide noted seriously that this wasn’t his area of competence, and he couldn’t comment on it. His life’s work, and that of his colleagues, is the security of Hungary. 

Zagreb, Croatia

At a café in Zagreb, my server voluntarily explained that Croatia is no longer a democracy. The government has moved migrants into a hostel next to her apartment building, even though its proximity to a school makes this technically illegal. The new arrivals—invariably young men—leer and shout at her when she walks her dog. She is thinking about getting a more aggressive canine companion—or emigrating. She inquired about Croatian organizations that might help her obtain a work permit in Trump’s America. 

That weekend, Zagreb was preparing for a mayoral race between a leftist and a challenger reasonably described as a Macronist. Leftist Tomislav Tomašević prevailed handily, though few locals seemed to notice. Nationalist forces delivered Croatian independence during the traumatic early 1990s, but even Franjo Tuđman’s once-sovereigntist HDZ party now toes the liberal European line. 

New Europe’s entry into the continental migration debacle is uneven. Croats and Poles are actively struggling with the immigration issue, while Hungarians and Slovaks insist current migration trends will have a negligible impact on their national demographics.

In the first quarter of this year, the Croatian government issued over 12,000 work permits to Nepali citizens and approximately 6,000 each to Filipinos and Indians. Furthermore, now that the country is part of the Schengen Zone, it features the EU’s largest external land border, across which tens of thousands of illegal migrants have entered Croatian territory since Schengen accession.

In Poland, migration has become arguably the most prominent political topic. The issue might reasonably be credited for conservative Karol Nawrocki’s razor-thin victory in the country’s June 1 presidential contest. A Venezuelan migrant’s attempted rape and subsequent murder of a young Polish woman is the latest in Poland’s now-regular progression of migrant crime, a concept that was virtually nonexistent a decade ago. Poles of all political stripes oppose the influx, but migrants continue arriving thanks to policies of Belarus and Germany, Warsaw and Brussels.

Hanau, Germany

It wasn’t long ago that Croats and Poles made up many of the migrants in Germany. In Hanau, near Frankfurt, traces of new and old attest to the state of modern Europe. After World War II, the city housed a displaced-persons camp for years, and then a U.S. military base for decades. A single plaque notes these historical convulsions. A handful of restaurants and shops showcase the Croatian and Polish immigrant communities, now largely middle-aged or older.

These characteristics of the cityscape are now almost incidental, for little about Hanau strikes the visitor as German, or even European. By my estimate, half of the people populating Hanau appeared to be of Middle Eastern or African origin. This tracks with Frankfurt’s recent milestone of becoming the first major German city to have a minority ethnic-German population. After accounting for age, the demographic realities are starker still; the sight of a few high-school-aged children of European origin on a street corner caught my attention, for it represented a noticeable departure from the norm.

Throughout town, niqab-clad women push strollers alongside trains of small children. Muslim women oversee the cash registers at German bakeries and halal eateries alike; their male family members captain the local rideshare fleet. In a wrinkle I haven’t noticed in other countries in Europe or North America, the German Uber app assures passengers its drivers have been thoroughly vetted for safety. Reflecting on the societal culpability of corporations like Uber does not require a tremendous mental leap.

It is precisely this tech milieu that needs Hanau. They would have us believe that all people, irrespective of culture, are interchangeable units of production in the never-ending quest for growth. A walk around Hanau unveils this lie. The conspicuous police presence evokes European stereotypes of American law-enforcement practices. Crime is increasingly of an unhinged, random nature; this month, a 22-year-old “resident” was arrested for exposing himself to a young woman in a courtyard. The Hanau cityscape is plastered with graffiti and trash. It recalls the crude depiction of Bratislava—meant to characterize post-communist Central and Eastern Europe—in the 2004 comedy EuroTrip. Ironically, Bratislava is beautiful, clean, and safe, while Western European cities increasingly resemble this cinematic hellscape. An observer can reach his own conclusions about the niqab, its impact upon a cultural landscape, and its relationship to beauty and goodness.

In February 2020, a schizophrenic German man conducted a shooting spree aimed at people of foreign origin in Hanau and its vicinity, killing nine and injuring five, before slaying his mother and himself. The gunman had espoused white-supremacist and incel views online and appeared to target victims based on their ethnicity. The German Interior Minister labeled the shooting spree an act of terrorism. Since then, Hanau has been invoked countless times in support of various pro-migration policies and talking points, producing what might be called the “Hanau Illusion.” 

The Hanau Illusion provides necessary ammunition to capitalists, politicians, bureaucrats, and NGO functionaries alike. According to this narrative, racism and anti-migrant violence represent an equal or greater societal threat than the influx itself. Only a racist like the Hanau gunman could fail to appreciate the benefits of cheap labor and ethnic restaurants. However much the city visibly degenerates, the Hanau Illusion maintains its currency in polite society.

To be sure, mass immigration has rocketed to the fore of European political discourse, having been a carefully restrained niche issue just 15 or 20 years ago. Policy achievements, though, have largely consisted of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Germany’s recent, highly touted deportation of 81 Afghans would not make a dent even in a small German city. Establishment politicians in France, Britain, and elsewhere promise to get tough around election time and deliver token solutions like this German one. Across much of the Old Continent, anti-migration parties are still effectively blocked from power. With each passing year, progressive European elites make their cities progressively less livable.

Polite society still speaks in terms of asylum and racism, multiculturalism and growth. It is long past time to talk about blonde women and money from the wall.