The Left has to make a choice: open borders or the welfare state

“There are 37 million Sudanese, all of whom without doubt want a better life. Do we have the moral duty to accommodate all those 37 million?”, Party Chairman Bart De Wever asks.

The migration crisis has confronted Europe with its own moral nihilism. Citizens who form a human chain around the North Station or invite transmigrants into their homes for a night’s sleep touch a sensitive chord in all of us. Suddenly we are all struggling with the age-old question: what does it mean to be a good person? What are our obligations? And to whom? The Christian inheritance we fall back on following the ebbing away of God dictates that we should treat our neighbours as we would treat ourselves. But how near do those neighbours need to be?

In that moral doubt, an industry of left-wing lawyers, NGOs and activists has found a healthy business. This government, they say, is carrying out a policy that is inhumane, selfish and heartless. The approach they are using is in fact a subtle form of moral blackmail, because anyone who doesn’t agree with them cannot be a good person. And who wants to be a bad person? From a standpoint of sincere moral compassion, we are all inclined to participate in that left-wing discourse.

But although the migration industry seems to be motivated by the will simply to do good, there are ideological forces hiding behind that moral façade. I cannot get away from the impression that the Left is cynically using the migration crisis, via legal battles and moral blackmail, to make the concept of “borders” so porous that the nation state is ultimately hollowed out. For some cosmopolitans, a wish is being fulfilled as a result. But the consequences of this are enormous and it is very much open to doubt as to whether they will be equally advantageous to all citizens.

Healthy res publica

After all, borders demarcate not only our democracy and citizenship, but also our implicit solidarity. Today we know who may make use of our Social security Social security is currently managed at the Federal level in Belgium. The most important pillars of Belgian social security are: sickness and invalidity insurance (NIDHI), pensions, unemployment insurance and child allowances. In addition, occupational illness, occupational accidents and annual holidays are dealt with at this level. Some Flemish parties have been campaigning for years for (large parts of) social security to be transferred to the Regions and Communities. social security and for what reason. Indeed, a healthy res publica creates an ethical community in which every citizen can shoulder his or her responsibility for the group, but also knows that he or she can count on that community himself or herself if necessary. In this context, net taxpayers make no objections to their contribution even though they do not personally know the fellow citizens who benefit from those contributions. The social security that we have built up on this basis is one of the most generous and open in the whole world.

Yet if we say that there are no longer any borders and everyone has to be able to count on our solidarity, we arrive at a situation in which there are no longer any fellow citizens with whom we can be solidary, but only fellow people who are here today but can be anywhere tomorrow. Human rights are not civil rights after all. Everyone is born with the inalienable right to life: that is a universal human right. But you are not born in Sudan with the universal and inalienable right of access to a Western European social security system. That is a civil right, which you have because you happened to be born in that Western European nation state, but which can also be acquired if you follow certain procedures and fulfil the conditions.

If we universalise every civil right, we must accept the consequences of doing so and concede that our current standard of living will become untenable, simply because we will no longer be able to afford it. Then you get a watered-down social system for paupers, which will no longer have any carrying capacity at all. After all, it is difficult to remain solidary with people who, while they enjoy the benefits of the social structures, have never contributed to them and in many cases will never contribute to them. The strongest shoulders will withdraw into gated communities with private security, where their children go to private schools and the residents themselves arrange their private pension and healthcare. A system like that is perfect if you manage to make a success of your life. If you don’t, then that’s just the way it goes.

North American model

Europe will then evolve towards a more North American social model, though it could end up being one with even less social protection. Because the USA has the geographical advantage of being flanked by two oceans and a single rich country with a very high standard of living to the north. It’s only in the south that there are migration flows that are hard to keep under control, and indeed they have been trying to seal off that border hermetically - even long before the arrival of Trump. Europe by contrast is a peninsula of the enormous Eurasian continent that is only separated from Africa by an inland sea. Without enforced borders, Europe can be entered on foot with no problem whatsoever. The choice is whether we allow this to happen or not.

And that choice has been made by the federal government. Transit migration is not a European problem; it is a Franco-Belgian problem as we are the only countries with an easily-crossed border with the United Kingdom. As a result of the clearing of the migrant camps in Calais, the problem has almost entirely shifted to our country. Now, the policy of the government is to avoid a second Calais at any price. But a second Calais is forming behind the scenes. As a result of the cooperation with left-wing NGOs and like-minded mayors, and via all sorts of campaigns to paint the government policy morally black and to have it suspended, the Left is now de facto organising the transit migration itself, even though it is de jure prohibited. It is extremely hypocritical that the moderate Left at the same time continues to claim that it is not advocating open borders. At least the extreme Left is honest in this regard.

So do we not have the duty to help people in need? Of course we do. But those who can help themselves will not fall into need. Anyone able to journey thousands of kilometres from East Africa to land up in a Western European welfare state - not with the intention of requesting asylum there but of travelling on to a different country - may fall into bitter poverty, but not into acute need. Need is the threat to life, not the wish to lead a pleasant life, no matter how understandable that wish is. There are 37 million Sudanese, all of whom without doubt want a better life. Do we have the moral duty to accommodate all those 37 million? And what about the rest of Africa?

Absorbing newcomers

The Left has to have the courage to speak clearly: what do they want? Do we have to accommodate everyone and does that accommodation have to take place via immigration? That’s fine by me, but then we will no longer be able to maintain our social system at the current level. If we choose that path, we have two options left to us: a closed social security system that is only accessible to people who contribute to it or a social security system that collapses entirely. In his or her absolute goodness, our left-wing Gutmensch will cause to come into being the exact opposite of what he or she claims to want: the total dismantling of the welfare state.

I’m in favour of a different policy. A policy with European efforts to accommodate refugees in their own regions and with closed borders. A policy with a strict control of legal migration whereby we, if necessary, emancipate the people we allow in in the values of the Enlightenment and activate them as quickly as possible so that they can make a contribution of their own to our welfare, and therefore to our social security. In that way we can absorb newcomers and benefit from their talent. In that way our social security can remain open, freely accessible and generous to all. But then we first have to have the courage to make difficult choices and carry out the chosen policy. Politicians must allow the general interest to prevail over personal conscience, no matter how difficult that can sometimes be.

Hannah Arendt ends the second part of her book “The Origins of Totalitarianism” with a chapter that remains controversial with the Left right up to the present day: “The Decline of the Nation State and the End of the Rights of Man”. In it she argues that we need the nation state and borders. It is not only the demarcation of our democracy, the delineation of the rule of law and the basis on which we organise our solidarity, it is also the only working mechanism that can enforce human rights. The nation state is literally a question of life or death. Let us ensure that the dream of the Gutmensch does not end in a nightmare for us all.