Geert Wilders’s Warning for Joe Biden Unchecked migration leads Dutch voters to swing right. The same could happen here. By William A. Galston
Few Americans follow the politics of the Netherlands, a small European country with a population of 17.5 million. But recent political developments in the country have important implications for the Continent and the U.S.
After the previous Dutch coalition collapsed over disagreements on surging immigration, national elections were held on Nov. 22. The Party for Freedom, or PVV, led by Geert Wilders—a far-right politician who has campaigned on anti-immigrant policies for more than a decade—shocked veteran observers by finishing first with 23.6% of the vote, raising its number of parliamentary seats to 37 from 17.
It isn’t hard to see why Mr. Wilders’s stance resonated with Dutch voters. Net immigration to the Netherlands rose to nearly 223,000 in 2022 and is on track to rise further this year. (That is proportionate to more than four million immigrants entering the U.S. in a year.) Of these immigrants, about 46,400 sought asylum in 2022; more than 70,000 are projected to do so in 2023.
Mr. Wilders saw an opportunity and seized it, calling for strict limits on overall immigration and an end to admission by asylum seekers into the Netherlands. He also linked excessive immigration rates to high prices and the lack of affordable housing. Whether or not he succeeds in forming a governing coalition, he has shifted the political balance in his country to the populist right.
As many observers have noted, Mr. Wilders’s gains were part of a broader trend. Europe expects to receive more than a million asylum applications this year, rivaling the immigration crisis of 2015. Many of these applicants are from Africa and the Mideast, raising fears that they’ll be difficult to integrate into the European mainstream and, in the case of Muslims, that they’ll pose security threats.
Anti-immigrant right-wing populist parties now rule in Italy and Hungary and participate in governing coalitions in Sweden, Finland and Slovakia. In France, right-wing populist Marine Le Pen leads in the race to succeed President Emmanuel Macron in 2027. In Germany, support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has surged to around 22%. This makes it the country’s second-largest political party and puts it well ahead of the center-left Social Democrats, who have shared or alternated in power with the center-right Christian Democrats since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949.
Immigration has re-emerged as an important issue in the U.S. to boot. As asylum seekers have surged at the southern border, President Biden has struggled to forge an effective response. Large numbers of entrants awaiting asylum hearings have been released into the states, creating new fiscal and social pressures across the country. New York Mayor Eric Adams’s complaints about the burdens on his city have made him persona non grata at the White House, but other, less-outspoken Democratic leaders share his views.
The Biden administration and congressional Democrats are similarly divided. Some believe that morality and international law require continuing or even expanding current policies, while others, including Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, are working with Republicans to craft a compromise. Meanwhile, polls indicate increasing concern about immigration, even among rank-and-file Democrats. A recent Fox News survey found about three-quarters of Democrats describing the situation at the southern border as either an emergency or a major problem, compared with 37% in 2019. Overall, Republicans are more trusted than Democrats to deal with border security by margins of 20 percentage points or more.
Mr. Biden hasn’t escaped blame for the situation. An Economist/YouGov survey last week found that only 35% of voters approve of his handling of immigration, the lowest of any issue tested. Only 22% of independents and 31% of suburban voters believe the president has done a good job handling the issue and, ominously, 31% of the Americans who voted for him in 2020 think he has botched it.
In presidential politics, a good offense is rarely enough to get the job done. It’s also important to acknowledge areas of weakness and do what’s possible to shore them up. In my judgment, it would be political malpractice for Mr. Biden to head into the general election with his current immigration stance, which is failing both substantively and in the court of public opinion.
During the 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden faced down calls to “defund the police,” reinforcing his reputation for realism and common sense. Although it’s late in the game, he needs to do the same for immigration by rejecting the principle of open borders and promising to enforce the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. He must at the same time work toward new policies—including a redefinition of what constitutes valid asylum claims—that better serve the interests of the American people.
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