What is it about immigration that makes otherwise intelligent people have shivery panic attacks? Immigration-sceptics are often accused of “xenophobia”, as if they had a medical problem of some kind. There are even junk science reports that ‘racism’ is caused by the inadequacy or age-related deterioration of the frontal lobes of the brain. Yet the weirdest psychological mannerisms are actually presented by people who are so uncritically in favour of immigration that they effectively operate against their respective constituencies’ and countries’ best interests, and whom accordingly we could term realityphobes.

Today, it was announced that the European Parliament has managed to hammer out a compromise proposal on the subject of illegal immigration (it is still subject to ratification by MEPs and member states). There would be a seven day period given for “voluntary return” (as if many would avail of this), then would come involuntary detention up to a maximum of six months (except for unspecified “special cases”, who could be incarcerated for up to 12 months). Nobody would be deported until there had been a readmission agreement with the country of destination (no doubt often facilitated through bribes of foreign aid). There would be special facilities and safeguards for unaccompanied children. Various NGOs would be given access to detention centres, to annoy the staff and puzzle (or amuse) the detainees. Finally, there would be a re-entry ban on involuntary deportees.

To a calm observer, the idea seems sensible enough (always presuming one agrees there should be such EU-wide agreements, or even an EU). If anything, it is still too easy-going an approach (it would mean that certain countries, such as the UK, would actually have to decrease their current maximum detention times). And of course the literal-minded courts can be relied upon to do their best to sabotage any kind of progress.

But the proposals, meek and milky though they are, have met with a decidedly un-calm response from the Goblin Group of the European Parliament (otherwise known as the Socialists). As one Dutch Liberal MP observed, “They [the Socialists] are acting politically irresponsibly and are completely immature”. (But what else did she expect?)

Almost inevitably, too, the Greens (zzzzzzz) are against the bill, appearing to believe that a list of ‘inalienable human rights’ put together on the back of an unpaid bill by doped-up students in 1968, taken by them to United Nations Plaza and The Hague (and subsequently solemnly intoned by great statesmen the world over, from Haiti to Burkina Faso, Gaza to Beijing) should always take precedence over all other considerations.

Why do Europe’s Socialists and Greens, who should both care about social harmony and who should both be opposed to importing poverty, so often react in this way? The answer to this important question, if there is one, is buried in the darkest corners of parapsychology.  DT