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The strength and weakness of liberalism is its one-dimensional thinking. Liberalism thinks in straightforward and clear principles. It believes in individual freedom. It believes in a market economy. It believes in openness. It believes in the rule of law. It believes in human rights of all.
And that sounds wonderful. Who would argue with that? All of us Europeans who love democracy, rule of law, openness and human rights should just agree, right? And we agree. It goes without saying that we Westerners believe in the good and beneficial social ideals that are so often associated with our Western democracy and our Western culture.
But we must also allow ourselves to think. We must allow ourselves to see complex contexts. And above all, we must allow ourselves to compromise with a reality that cannot always be reduced to simple principles.
One of the reasons why a new conservatism is emerging in the West is that the ideology of liberalism so easily leads to irrational uncompromisingness. Because even though we love openness, we sometimes must accept that too generous openness is likely to create problems. Even though we believe in individual freedom, we sometimes must remind ourselves that human existence consists not only of freedom but also of unchosen starting points, of established contexts, of natural laws, of societal demands, of social demands. A market economy is good if we want to live in freedom and prosperity. But we must also say that money and growth are not everything in life, and that there may be other values in existence that must also be considered in addition to money and growth. Ideals on the one hand, and on the other hand a reality that requires adaptations and compromises.
Sometimes it can also be a matter of different legitimate interests opposing each other. Different principles can oppose each other and seem to exclude each other. And then it is not a question of choosing one principle and completely ignoring the other. But finding an appropriate balance, a compromise, a pragmatic solution that gives the best possible, or the least regrettable outcome. This becomes clear in the debate that is now taking place in various Western countries around Donald Trump’s deportation policy.
It has attracted a lot of attention that the new American administration has deported many illegal immigrants. And if it has involved immigrants who have also had connections to organized crime, they have been able to be deported directly to prisons in other countries. One case has attracted attention, and it concerns a man who was wrongly deported to a prison in El Salvador. The US Supreme Court has stated that the deportation was wrong and that it should not have happened. The US should now act, the Supreme Court believes, to ensure that the man is freed.
Of course, illegal immigrants should not be deported directly to prisons if they have not committed any crimes other than being illegally in a country where they have no right to be. This applies to the US, and it should also apply to the EU.
Deporting illegal immigrants is not a problem. We should do much more of that in the EU. Above all, we should ensure that illegal migrants do not enter the Union at all, because then we would have to keep an eye on them and take the trouble to get them out. But now, as it is in both the EU and the US, we have de facto a lot of illegal migrants who should never have come here. Similarly, we have asylum seekers whose asylum applications have been rejected, and there are a variety of different categories of foreign nationals whose temporary residence permits are not valid and who should leave the EU as soon as possible.
But deportations should of course be carried out in accordance with our legal principles. We should not send people to prisons in El Salvador if they are not criminals. But – and this is where we must now ask an important question – is this principle of legal certainty that should also apply to foreign citizens so important that we should risk the safety of our own citizens? Because that is what will happen if all the young men who come to the Western world, a certain proportion of whom are criminals and dangerous, are allowed to stay unnecessarily long because their asylum applications and their deportation cases are to be processed in accordance with our beautiful principles of equal rights for all people.
We must therefore realize that the principle of the right of all people to be treated in accordance with our ideas of justice and legal certainty must be set against the principle that our politicians also have a responsibility to take care of the safety of their own population.
Many illegal immigrants have been able to stay in the EU, or in the US, for far too long because our legal systems are so keen that we always do the right thing. Asylum applications take time. Appeals must be dealt with. Then illegal migrants can evade the authorities and still live in our communities and sometimes even enjoy certain rights. And our law enforcement authorities do not have the right to simply send these illegal migrants outside our borders. And this is because we have been so keen that everyone is treated equally.
The problem with this, however, is that these people are given time to possibly commit crimes in our countries and that innocent individuals from our population will be affected and become victims of crime. Innocent people will have to pay a price for our legal certainty. That is how it looks. And our politicians and our opinion leaders must take this into account when they discuss migration, deportation and legal certainty.
When Donald Trump defends his deportation policy, he refers precisely to his obligation as American president to take responsibility for the safety of American citizens. All over the Western world, human rights activists are horrified. And they do so because they refuse to pit different interests and principles against each other. They are so used to thinking that the ideals of our human rights are so universal and so sacred that they cannot in any way be the subject of any kind of compromise or negotiation. That is why they never want to talk about the people who become victims of their ideals. Because we have victims. The Uzbek who carried out the Islamist terrorist attack in Stockholm in 2017, in which five innocent people lost their lives, should not have stayed in Sweden. Due to far too generous immigration rules with the possibility of appealing against refusals, he was able to remain in Sweden. The price for that was paid by five innocent Swedes.
We can choose to be pure idealists. We can choose simple principles. We can choose to stand up for the rule of law at all costs, whatever the cost. But then innocent people will have to pay for it!
One can certainly criticize Donald Trump’s deportation policy on a variety of grounds. But it is still sympathetic for an American president to say that his primary loyalty is to American citizens.