This week, for example, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party in the United Kingdom announced its plans to use the Navy to intercept and return migrants who are caught crossing the English Channel to French beaches. This plan is a gimmick, unbound from military realities, law, or the obviously catastrophic consequences it would have for cooperation with France — cooperation that matters greatly to the U.K. for a host of reasons. Still, Reform, which is steadily leading in the polls — the next general election must be called before 2029 — remains committed to the action, even if the French government opposes it.

In place of this performance art, truly effective immigration reform in Europe would require major changes to legal and welfare systems.

First off, it’s important to recognize that not all immigration to Europe is negative. On the contrary, Europe’s aging populations need younger workers to fill gaps in key sectors such as healthcare and social work. The key is to ensure that these workers are willing and able to work rather than live on benefits, and that they recognize immigration to a European nation requires conformity with European values. Too many immigrants integrate themselves only into their own ethnic communities, fostering social division. It also advances ideologies that are sometimes fundamentally anathema to European democratic and social norms.

That brings us back to Spain. Sitting just across from Morocco, the country is a natural access juncture to the European Union. But because Spain provides a relatively easy and short route to residency for those who can show local connections or family ties, the country is also seen as a simple pathway to becoming an EU resident. Healthcare, schooling for children, and other benefits are also provided to migrants on arrival. The U.K. offers another case in point in this ease-of-immigration regard.

HOW MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN EARNED TRUMP’S EAR OVER NETANYAHU

New Prime Minister Andy Burnham recognizes that he has a small window to show the public that he can better secure British borders. Unfortunately, Burnham seems determined to follow in his predecessor Keir Starmer’s footsteps by focusing on investing in coastal security. But this strategy only stamps a band-aid on a suppurating wound. Migrants will keep attempting to cross the channel because they perceive the probability and benefits of getting ashore as far outweighing even the risks of drowning.

Those benefits are vast. Under U.K. law, migrants must be provided food, accommodation, effectively free healthcare, free schooling for their children, and access to the legal process, including appeals. Migrants are also provided with a small cash stipend to cover necessities. And while they are banned from employment, many migrants engage in shadow-economy work through personal connections. Because of the laborious appeals court process, it often takes years to remove even those whose asylum claims are rapidly rejected.

All of this is fostering a deep sense of public disenchantment that is spilling into large protests. As the English broadcaster Patrick Christys recently noted at Oxford University, one reason that the English flag is increasingly being displayed on homes is due to deep frustration over high rates of migration involving working-aged men who claim asylum for spurious reasons. Though most obey the law, too many of these men then commit serious crimes in the country that now houses and feeds them. The U.K. has also seen repeated instances of young women, including schoolgirls, being made to feel uncomfortable by groups of asylum seekers.

Too few Britons are willing to recognize that social security benefits have become excessive. And that far too many of their fellow citizens prefer the lethargy of easy welfare benefits to work. Nevertheless, the explosion in migrants’ spending on public services has caused understandable fury.

There is a broader concern here. U.S. adversaries such as Russia make much propaganda use of these tensions, exploiting them to build a mirage of shared values with the aggrieved. Russia has had success in boosting Hungary’s Fidesz Party, Germany’s AfD, and France’s National Rally. It is no surprise that the foreign policy platforms of these parties ran in anti-American and anti-NATO directions. It is in America’s interest, then, that allied governments get serious about immigration reform.

That starts with legal reform.

France, Germany, Greece, and many other European nations face similar issues to the U.K. and Spain. At the heart of this challenge is the European Convention on Human Rights, which, alongside enacting domestic legislation, prohibits nations from expelling migrants to nations where they may be at risk of persecution. And because it is nearly impossible to prove that a migrant has come from an otherwise safe country (migrants often claim to have escaped from a truly dangerous country rather than their own safer but poorer nation), it is easy for migrants to game the system and pretend they are arriving from a place of danger.

Legal reform of the ECHR is crucial to change the rules of the game, both in how expulsion orders are processed and in how migrants are treated on arrival. Subsequent to these reforms, adults should be held in detention facilities rather than, as is often the case, hotels and hostels. Healthcare and other benefit services should be restricted to emergency care, with biometric data taken from those who access this care. This creates a digital record through which those using services could be charged for that usage in the future, assuming they one day have the financial means to do so. These steps would reduce public concern over excess demand on already-strained public services.

Reforming or, if necessary, abandoning the ECHR, would also allow for the immediate expulsion of asylum applicants within days or weeks of their arrival in a third country. Potentially credible asylum seekers could then be processed in that country. The previous Conservative government in the U.K. attempted just such a scheme, deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda to await approval or denial on their applications. But the scheme was poorly planned, lacked scale, and the U.K. Supreme Court ultimately blocked it. Clear parliamentary action with explicit language that the courts could not ignore would resolve this issue (in the U.K. system, acts of parliament override Supreme Court judgments). Even then, it may also become necessary to impose annual caps on asylum applications.

A MULTIPOLAR WORLD WOULD BE DISASTROUS FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

The overriding objective in bringing down illegal immigration is to fundamentally alter a risk-reward calculus that currently skews so heavily towards the latter.

Yes, many migrants only want better lives for themselves and their families. Those who can provide value should be welcomed with conditions. But intersecting with overburdened welfare states and a populist sense of depleting national identity, public anger over uncontrolled immigration is growing. Racism and violent protest movements are inherently immoral. But unless and until European governments take effective action, public anger will only grow.