What’s our problem with immigration?

On Inside Geneva this week, we unpick the divisive topic of migration and asylum. Why are some countries closing their doors?

“In Europe we are seeing one country after another erect barbed wire around their country and around a continent,” says Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

When does restricting immigration turn into human rights violation?

“We believe it’s within the rights of any government to set immigration policies that they believe make sense for their country and electorate. But setting lawful immigration policies does not mean that you have the right to mistreat migrants,” says Philippe Bolopion, executive director at Human Rights Watch.

Is immigration really a threat to our jobs or services?

“Overall, most studies are clear that migrant workers are not in competition with national workers in the labour market. [...] In Western countries, the medical sector depends on migrant workers,” says Vincent Chetail from the Global Migration Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute.

Why are some of us so angry about immigration?

“We are reaching a peak in violent anti‑migrant rhetoric, which has nothing to do with reality,” continues Chetail.

Many countries are cutting foreign aid and limiting immigration. A recipe for disaster?

 “If you want to live in a stable world without uncontrolled migration, pandemics and insecurity, then you invest in hope for people who have been displaced,” says Egeland.

Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva for the full interview.

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Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
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Transcript

Setting The Stakes On Migration

SPEAKER_03 0:58

This is Inside Geneva. I'm your host, Imogen Folkes, and this is a production from SwissInfo, the international public media company of Switzerland. In today's program.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

We've been dealing with the refugee situation for 10 years. At some point, that's enough.

SPEAKER_10 1:18

There's a new battle on the streets of Britain, fought with flags and calls for deportations and fear-mongering about immigrants.

SPEAKER_11 1:26

In Europe, we're rather seeing one country after the other erecting barbed wire around their country and around our continent.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

They're pouring into our country. Nobody's even looking at them. They just come in. The crime is going to be tremendous. The terrorism is going to be.

SPEAKER_06 1:45

We believe it's within the rights of any government to set immigration policies that they believe make sense for their country and their electorate. But setting lawful immigration policies does not mean that you have the right to mistreat migrants.

SPEAKER_12 2:32

We are reaching a peak in terms of violent anti-migrant rhetoric, which has nothing to do with the reality.

SPEAKER_03 2:46

Hello and welcome again to Inside Geneva. How shall I describe it? Tricky, challenging, divisive, polarized debate around immigration. It seems to dominate our political discourse. Other challenges like climate change, even conflict, have been pushed down the agenda. So why have we become so concerned about this issue? What are the facts and figures behind the political rhetoric? That's what we're going to talk about in this episode. And we're going to start with a conversation I had recently with Jan Eglund, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who told me he was dismayed by the tone of the debate in Europe and by what he sees as a lack of support for refugees.

SPEAKER_11 3:40

I think we are seeing a race to the bottom. I had hoped we would be much better off in Europe. We're rather seeing one country after the other erecting barbed wire around their country and around our continent. And it's in contradiction with the uh Geneva Convention of 1951, which was made by and for European refugees at the time. How come we're then the continent putting that convention to its grave just because we are not refugees anymore?

SPEAKER_03 4:18

Do you think it's that? Or because some people say that, you know, that was created in the wake of the Second World War Convention, and that really is not suited to the situations we have today when people are much more mobile, there's more conflict.

SPEAKER_11 4:34

There were millions and millions of refugees in Europe at the time. I mean, the Second World War was horrific. Tens of millions were displaced altogether. In our time and age, also millions are displaced. The point is that we're much richer now. We're more nationalistic, we're more inward-looking, we're more xenophobic as Europeans and North Americans. We became so rich, we're not willing anymore to share protection in our countries. It's a battle of values, and we're losing this battle of values at the moment, so we have to fight harder for the people who are desperately seeking protection.

SPEAKER_03 5:19

But the thing is, you know, people don't feel richer in Europe. They feel challenged. My own country. It's a common refrain. I can't get a house. I can't get a doctor's appointment. And they're blaming, rightly or wrongly, immigration and asylum and possibly mixing the two things up.

SPEAKER_11 5:39

Yeah, I I disagree that it is these refugees that is the cause to many of the problems of an aging Europe, a Europe that is not producing as we should, has not been as innovative as we should, is not educating the young generations as well as we should. And that's the uh the fault of the refugees or the asylum seekers. No, it's not. Actually, it will be a problem for Europe, an aging Europe, if we do not have people coming from outside.

SPEAKER_03 6:13

I met a very senior diplomat in Geneva who was justifying their government's quite savage cuts in foreign aid, who said, we've been spending this money for decades and what has it improved? Absolutely nothing.

Values, Wealth, And Responsibility

SPEAKER_11 6:29

I also hear that for from some now. What's the interest of Europe to help in Africa and in Sudan and elsewhere? Why should we care? Because it's in harmony with our ideals and our interests. If you want to live in a stable world without uncontrolled migration, pandemics, wars, and insecurity, you invest in hope for people who have been displaced. It's it's a simple equation, really. Millions are people displaced by violence. They need to have hope. If not, we will learn to regret it in Europe because they will want to move, and there will also be instability very close to a continent.

SPEAKER_03 7:16

Just to come back to what you were saying earlier, you said we've become more inward-looking and more nationalistic and xenophobic. Why do you think that is?

SPEAKER_11 7:29

I think uh number one, we've not been good enough explaining how often we succeed. I mean, again, in Syria, I've been to places where people returned from after 12 years of displacement, and the school that my organization, Norwegian Refugee Council, helped rebuild, the children were singing uh in jubilant of having returned to their ancestors' land, and we were helping people rebuild their homes. But those kind of success stories were not getting to the taxpayers who believe it often is a hopeless case, and then we forget that if there's instability in the world and no hope for hundreds of millions of people elsewhere, it will come to haunt us as a continent. We need to go from this race to the bottom. Of course we have to re receive people as we've done now for generations. If they seek protection, if they don't need protection, of course they can be returned. We cannot end European civilization and solidarity like this. How come we are putting the Refugee Convention and the right of asylum to its grave? It is contrary to what we believe in as European civilization.

SPEAKER_03 8:55

So dismay about what's happening in Europe from Yan Eglund, meanwhile, events in the United States are causing alarm among human rights groups.

SPEAKER_04 9:10

The U.S. has sent hundreds of mostly Venezuelan migrants to be held without trial at this mega prison in El Salvador.

SPEAKER_03 9:18

The roundups by immigration control forces or ICE, and in January, the shooting of protesters were shocking to many.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

More than technically managed to be agents, humbling people, one of our constituents, shooting the deputy.

SPEAKER_04 9:41

Mourners left tributes on a frozen snowbank, the site where Alex Predi was shot and killed by federal agents, and the world needs to respond to this.

SPEAKER_08 9:50

We are fighting for our democracy in our country.

SPEAKER_03 9:53

Philippe Bolapion is executive director of Human Rights Watch. He doesn't argue with the US policy on immigration, but he has big concerns about how immigrants are being talked about and how they're being treated.

Aid, Stability, And Hope

SPEAKER_06 10:07

We believe it's within the rights of the US government or any government for that matter to set immigration policies that they believe make sense for their country and their electorate. So as a human rights organization, we are not a pro-immigration organization per se. But selling lawful immigration policies does not mean that you have the right to mistreat migrants, even migrants who are undocumented in the country. And very sadly, that's what the US administration is doing. It's rounding up Venezuelan migrants in the US and sending them to El Salvador, to prisons where they are being tortured, where they are experiencing sexual abuse. And that's a clear violation of human rights norms. So the Trump administration is within its right to set the immigration policy that it wants, that its electors want. It's within its right to control its borders. It's not within its right to send migrants to be tortured in another country. It's not within its rights to detain migrants in inhumane conditions. So, you know, that's what international human rights law, international human rights norms do. They constrain governments to make sure that people's rights are being respected, even people who may be undocumented in the US today.

SPEAKER_03 11:36

Do you think that message from you, though, is is getting across? I mean, we hear very often, I mean, not just in the United States, but in in Europe too, people cite immigration as one of their biggest concerns. Do you think the framing of the debate is wrong?

SPEAKER_06 11:56

I mean, there is no question that the sort of uh anti-immigration sentiment has uh fueled the rise of uh illiberal movements both in the US and and in Europe. And you know, uh some populist political movements are demonizing uh migrants or asylum seekers, they are making them responsible for all the ills of the societies, they are demonizing them in ways that are extremely dangerous and sort of uh contrary to human rights values and uh human rights norms. So I think we need to separate what is uh a sort of a legitimate uh political debate about uh how to control immigration in any uh given country from what would be more in the range of uh hate mongering, from uh demonizing entire uh communities and cheering at times the violations of their rights. Even people who are illegally in a country have rights that have to be respected, they are due process. There is a rule of law in the US, in many other countries, and and uh the Trump administration is crossing these lines every day and is not only demonizing immigrant communities but uh violating their rights. We see that with the the practices of ICE in uh uh Minnesota, massed agents who cannot be identified, who uh use uh policing methods that are uh improper, unlawful, to people who have been killed uh in just the last uh month without uh any lawful justification. So these uh trends are very dangerous and they do fuel the rise of uh illiberal movements.

SPEAKER_03 13:37

It's interesting that you've used in your last answer there the word demonizing a couple of times, and that was actually my next question is do you fear the consequences of the kind of language that is used by some political leaders about immigrants? We've heard how President Trump, for example, talks about members of the Somali community.

SPEAKER_06 14:02

I mean, the demonization of entire communities uh does have uh real life consequences. One has to wonder how much President Trump's attack on uh Ilan Omar, a US Congresswoman who came from Somalia, uh who was victim of uh an attack a couple of days ago, how much President Trump's attacks on her and demonizing of her and the entire community, how much of a role did that play in that individual attack? So this type of rhetoric is dangerous and and it has uh real world uh consequences.

Success Stories We Fail To Tell

SPEAKER_03 14:37

We're also facing a kind of war of words about what's what's true or not. So when I talk to some of my friends and colleagues in the States, many of whom, because of limited holidays and cash flow issues, have not been to Europe for a very, very, very long time. They do ask me, Oh, how are you coping with all the crime? And they mentioned this phrase, civilizational erasure, which we saw in the US national security report. How do we work on combating something which I think many people in Europe would say, yeah, that's completely the wrong picture of how we are?

SPEAKER_06 15:19

Yeah, I mean it's clear that the Trump administration is uh, you know, flirting with uh white nationalist ideologies, a sense that, you know, the European civilization is in decline, is is openly supporting illiberal movements in Europe, and uh is uh trying to draw strength from that. So these narratives are of course dangerous, they are toxic for many communities. You know, they are playing into some of the worst tendencies of the electorate in some places who you know resort to uh scapegoating entire communities, and they believe that you know they can renege on the rights of these communities, and they don't think that eventually this will come back to haunt them, that their rights will also be underline at some point. And history shows that often you start with the the most disfavored or vulnerable uh communities in a society, but as authoritarian tendencies progress, eventually it's large parts of the populations that are deprived of their rights and deprived of you know the opportunity to choose the government that that rules over them.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

Do you think that's an increasingly difficult argument to make, though, in the current climate? We moving more towards this uh idea of sovereignty, uh nation states, us, the indigenous population, even personal identity, that that whole principle of of um human rights being universal is getting lost. It might not resonate with people if you say to them, look, if you harm somebody else's rights, even somebody you don't like, you disagree with, you wish didn't live on your street, in the end it's going to be bad for you too.

Human Rights Alarms In The U.S.

SPEAKER_06 17:09

You know, I think ultimately people want their rights. Uh you see it these days in the US when the sort of uh reaction to uh the ICE practices in uh Minneapolis, where the Trump administration is clearly under pressure. We wrote a report about the torture of uh Venezuelan uh migrants uh that was uh aired on uh 60 minutes. These things matter, the facts do matter, and and Human Rights Watch is really well positioned actually to establish those facts. You know, in a world where the Trump administration is uh promoting, you know, fake news and uh alternative facts. At the end of the day, if you can bring the real facts to the table, you you can influence public opinion.

SPEAKER_03 17:53

And that's one of the problems around the immigration debate. There are opinions and there are impressions. Philippe Bolopian and Jan Eglund have their views about human rights, about the right to asylum. But some communities do feel genuine concern about immigration.

SPEAKER_10 18:12

On immigration, I think Europe was foolish. We attracted the wrong kind of immigrants. We need immigrants, but we need to keep attracting the right kind.

SPEAKER_09 18:19

Doesn't where they were from. It's just the fact that suddenly five to six hundred males, young males will be in the town and wandering around them.

SPEAKER_10 18:29

But our main specialty is attracting immigrants that are actually willing on the social system, and our citizens see this, and this is fuel to the extreme right.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

They worry about job security, about pressure on public services, and about crime.

SPEAKER_10 18:44

It is a problem because we don't know the um, we don't know the criminal record, we don't know the medication.

SPEAKER_07 18:50

They walk around in gangs, you're not safe because you're usually on your own, but they're always in groups of at least five.

SPEAKER_03 18:56

That's why, as Philippe said, we need facts. To get some, I went to Geneva's Graduate Institute to talk to Vincent Shetai. He's director of the Global Migration Centre at the Institute. In an office surrounded by data about migration, with studies from dozens of countries. I asked him first what the data showed about migrant workers putting pressure on the jobs market.

SPEAKER_12 19:23

Overall, most studies make clear that migrant workers are not in competition with national workers on the labour market. Generally, they are taking jobs which are not taken by nationals as such. And obviously, you can in some specific sector find a difference, but overall, as a general trend, there is no risk of unemployment among the national population because of migration.

SPEAKER_03 19:55

People also say migrants are putting pressure on hospitals and housing, which really should be for national people.

SPEAKER_12 20:04

Notice is another interesting argument because, first of all, in western states the medical sector depends on migrant workers. This is true, particularly true for the UK, the US, and many other countries in Europe. The hospitals cannot survive without foreign doctors and so on. So this is quite interesting, this kind of uh counter argument. And then they are not using healthcare more extensively than nationals. Sorry. Yes, housing again, because I mean the problem is that housing is more about the market as such than the population per se, in the sense that most uh incentives in terms of welfare benefit for housing and so on, many are reserved to nationals, and here again there is no tension between uh more migration and less housing. There is no correlation.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

And then the one we we read about a lot in the newspapers migrants commit more crime.

SPEAKER_12 21:17

Yes, here again, and it is interesting because we have a very good databases now since more than one century in the US, and uh it is clearly demonstrated that they are overall uh I mean foreign born uh migrants are committing overall less uh crimes than national population. If you of course exclude the question of documentation, uh the administrative fines related to source wound so a crime related to not having the right papers. Exactly. So if we exclude T's, of course, but even here, I mean, in the sense that uh again, contrary to the common uh misperception, undocumented migrants are a very small uh minority, in fact, according to all projections. Uh the vast majority of migrants are coming with a regular paper visa and so on.

Lawful Policy Versus Abuse

SPEAKER_03 22:13

There's one country in Europe which is taking a slightly different approach to immigration. Spain, for example, has offered an amnesty to undocumented migrants. It's not citizenship, it's an amnesty, perhaps a path to citizenship later on. Spain's economy is actually doing quite well. Do you see a connection there that other countries could learn from?

SPEAKER_12 22:34

Several experts uh have mentioned that there is a connection between economic dynamism of Spain compared to other European countries and immigration. So this is correlated by several studies. Then it would be too easy in the sense, of course, it is part. The picture. But uh I don't want to replace one narrative by another one in the sense that obviously migration is an avenue for economic development for Shu, but obviously this is not the only one in the sense that dynamism of Spain is partially due to immigration, but there are many other factors.

SPEAKER_03 23:10

You've given me lots of evidence, lots of facts, quoted lots of reports. But how do you combat this fear? Because I hear it also from people who I would have been surprised. They say I feel threatened, I'm worried, I'm worried for my daughters. Can you counter that fear with your facts?

SPEAKER_12 23:30

I mean, this is not to me to counter a narrative which is wrongly sprayed for bad reasons by politicians. I'm not responsible for this. I'm responsible as an independent scholar to tell the truth to those who are asking me some evidence. But obviously, what is very disturbing now is that even I'm working in this area since three decades, and I can see that even a pure evidence-based approach is no longer accepted as such. And this is quite telling about the level of manipulation we have reached today in this area. Despite all the important contribution after the Second World War, human rights, fight against racism, what is striking is the racialization of the discourse and the fact that despite the formal prohibition of hate speech, now hate speech has become the new normal, clearly. And here this is very worrisome in the sense that we are reaching a peak in terms of violent anti-migrant rhetoric, which has nothing to do with the reality. I'm used to say to my students that the reality of migration is at the opposite of what is described by in political discourse and mass media as such. And obviously, there are many reasons for this gap. The gap is huge between uh reality and misperception, and there are many reasons for see this gap. First of all, of course, electionering is a key factor. Using migrants as capevilles to avoid addressing the real issues at stake, climate change, unemployment, health issues and so on. So obviously, this is part of the picture.

SPEAKER_03 25:33

When you hear some of this rhetoric, I mean it seems to become quite extreme now in the United States. Does this concern you?

SPEAKER_12 25:43

Of course, uh, I mean uh the US is the state in the world with the most important number of migrants, and uh most of its economic growth is also due to this contribution. What is extremely worrisome is related to the systematic violation of the most basic human rights of migrants. Aber Scorpus, the right to explain uh its own situation. So what is worrying is also the rule of law is under attack through the operation against the migrants. And TC is extremely worrisome as such.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

And first of all, I want to thank El Salvador and their president for their partnership with the United States of America to bring our terrorists here and to incarcerate them and have consequences for the violence that they have perpetuated in our communities.

SPEAKER_05 26:30

A new report found some Venezuelan citizens deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador faced horrifying abuse during their time in a notorious prison. The abuse allegedly includes systematic torture, sexual violence, and forced disappearances.

Rhetoric, Demonization, And Risk

SPEAKER_03 26:46

So the facts don't really support the negative rhetoric around immigration, Vincent Shetai says. But as he points out, facts and often the institutions which produce them are not really trusted anymore, at least by some sectors of the population. That's why even Vincent, who deals primarily in statistics, has come to share some of the concerns of human rights groups. That the debate on immigration is now being twisted into a real threat to our fundamental rights and principles. Human Rights Watchers' annual report for 2026 warns that our global system of human rights is under threat. And so I had another question for Philippe Baulopion. So when you see the people of Minnesota peacefully protesting against these immigration raids, delivering food to their neighbors who are frightened to go out, does that give you some confidence that not everything's lost? Because in your report, you're asking if the United States has switched sides on human rights?

SPEAKER_06 27:58

Well, it's clear that the government, the Trump administration, is hostile to the human rights uh movement and to the entire ecosystem of human rights norms. You know, President Trump is proud to be bound only by his own morality, not by international law. He's proud to order unlawful strikes on the boats of uh alleged uh drug traffickers in the Pacific or in the Caribbean, for example. So the US government doesn't speak for the entire American people. And ultimately, you know, that's where the response uh lies to protect rights. It's in electors, voters who demand their rights, who protest the abuses of uh power. And uh, you know, ultimately that's uh that's a battle to be won in the electoral system. We we do not take political positions as a as a nonprofit organization. Human rights is our is our mandate. And these days it's it's hard not to see that the Trump administration is uh raising a fundamental challenge to a lot of the rights and values that the American people have uh fought for. We we see a deterioration of democracy in the US, a rapid deterioration of democracy and an attack on all of the pillars of this democracy, all of the checks on power for the president. And it's a dangerous uh slide and it really has consequences for the entire world.

SPEAKER_03 29:25

And that brings me on to my very last question, because if we broaden it out from the United States, although obviously there is an awful lot of focus on the US at the moment, there are millions of people, including the listeners to this podcast, who do really want to stand up for their rights and they want to keep them. What should they be doing?

SPEAKER_06 29:51

I mean, I would say that, you know, aspiration for human rights is a very enduring feeling. You know, you can see that people, even when they face tremendous odds these days in Iran, for example, risking their lives to march on the street to demand basic human rights. It's a powerful, enduring idea, uh, one that authoritarian governments around the world are trying to smash, but they never can do that durably. And uh so you know, often people who who study democracy say that democracy dies with a whimper, not with a big bang, it dies through a thousand cuts when people renounce their rights. So I think if we are to to push back against this trend of uh receding human rights, receding democracy, it's really for people to rise up wherever they are and do whatever they can to not tolerate an encroachment on their basic rights.

SPEAKER_03 30:57

And that rallying cry from Philippe Bolopion brings us to the end of this edition of Inside Geneva. If you are concerned that your and your neighbour's rights are in danger, stand up and defend them. We know immigration remains a challenging topic, but we hope this program brought some useful perspective to the debate. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the issue, so please share them by writing to us at insidegeneva at swisinfo.ch. Next time, to mark International Women's Day, we'll be looking at the situation for women in Afghanistan and asking whether the world has forgotten them. Join us on March 3rd for that episode. A reminder you've been listening to Inside Geneva, a Swiss Info production. You can subscribe to us and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Check out our previous episodes how the International Red Cross unites prisoners of war with their families, or why survivors of human rights violations turn to the UN in Geneva for justice. I'm Imogen folks. Thanks again for listening.