On immigration

en it pt

2026-08-02

A specter is haunting Europe once again. For a time it hid behind yet another of its ever-changing disguises, festering and growing, but its devastating effects have become increasingly evident, and impossible to ignore.

the question

First, some qualifications, since this is such a polarizing subject (we will soon see why), often discussed in the most primitive and superficial manner possible.

This is not about racial superiority, obviously, but cultural superiority, so to speak, and the distinction is crucial⁰. Some cultures are better than others: not absolutely, but to the extent that they adopt ideas — and ideals — which are better than others. It is irrelevant, a mere historical accident, that such cultural divisions sometimes overlap with so-called “racial” divisions: nothing precludes a culture from recognizing and adopting these universal truths and joining the great fellowship we call the West¹. It is this which distinguishes nations which flourish from those perpetually mired in self-destructive corruption and conflict, and not, contrary to the incessant proclamations of the modern age, the exploitation of one by the other².

Also, none of this is about legal immigration³. Reasonable people can argue about what kind of foreigners they want their society to take in, and how many, and at what rate. There is nothing immoral about this: these stable and just societies are extremely difficult to develop and maintain, as one quick glance at a history book will show; it might as well be called a miracle. This can only occur within a group (whatever its composition) where all individuals share a moral code and abide by it⁴.

And that is exactly what condoning illegal immigration subverts⁵. A law that is not enforced might as well not exist, and worse: to not enforce it is to tear the very fabric of civilized society, to spit in the face of law-abiding citizens. Not only is it unjust to them, but also to the criminals themselves, who are left in their delinquent state, degrading the society they ostensibly wish to be a part of. An illegal immigrant offends that society with its very act of entering it, which is a rejection of and an affront to its rules. The law is a teacher, and to leave these criminals unpunished is to deny them the opportunity to truly become citizens in the proper sense of the word⁶.

the fall of (modern) man

Critical and ominous as all of this may be, it still does not get to the bottom of the problem, to the reason why it is so concerning. In truth these migration waves are only a symptom, not the cause — though, once effected, they do inflict severe damage to an already frail society.

Even the Spanish government admits that one of the primary reasons for the large demand for immigration is population decline. Fertility in Spain is at the abysmal rate, even for Western standards, of 1.1, meaning each woman has on average about one child⁷. Take a moment to make sure you understand just how apocalyptic this number is: it means effectively a halving of the population every generation, absent other factors⁸.

This is no doubt in part fueled by the modern apocalyptic fervor, with its tired alarmist claims of overpopulation that have gone unfulfilled for more than a century. But that is also only one more facet of the real problem: the systematic, relentless attack on the core values and principles of the great societies that built the Western world. The problems discussed so far are just the symptoms of a society that has given up on itself, given up on its history and its ideals, decided that it is not worth preserving and should just sail into the sunset and disappear⁹.

And there is no shortage of predators — some quite literally barbarians at the gate — waiting for the opportunity to take over. There is no need for grand conspiracy theories about one single group (pick your favorite) coordinating in the shadows to usurp power, the motivating spirit behind all of this is obvious to students of history and the human character: a divided society is more easily invaded and pillaged; ignorant and amoral people are more easily ruled and controlled, by collectivist ideologies; unprincipled women are more easily exploited; an undemanding, shallow existence is more easily subsisted; etc. Idealism, struggle, virtue, are all difficult, the arduous product of great civilizations. It is much easier to dance with abandon on the streets — at least until the flaming ruins come crashing down all around.

νόστος

I will not lie (I am not a politician, or an “influencer”). Humanity is so far down this death spiral, it will take super-human effort to revert. It may even take saints. It is certainly a titanic request for an age so self-centered and selfish as ours.

All that said, here is how I suggest we begin to revert this extremely dire situation.

• Get off of social media as much as possible. Stop using it as your primary source of knowledge. Stop basing your principles on what others say you should think.

  Forget politics, stop putting your faith in politicians or other low forms of life to correct the world.

• Get a real education. This will be difficult. It is the primary duty of society, and it has failed us. It has failed precisely because it conveniently forgot and abdicated its primary duty.

  But this cycle will go on, forever downward (and hell is a bottomless pit, there is always down), unless we recognize that duty is now ours, and accept it.

• Read fervently, and think critically about what you read. Read primary sources as much as you can. Read the classics. There is a reason the liberal arts were so called: their very purpose is to instill those principles, to make men free (contrary to what social media have inculcated in you, being free is not doing whatever one wants, it is having the capacity to do what one ought to).

• Learn about your culture.  Learn what made it great, because it is great. Learn exactly what makes it better than others, in those aspects that it is. Learn what an immense privilege that is, learn to respect and to be grateful for it.

• Begin small and humbly, begin with yourself. Ask the question Solzhenitsyn asked in the depths of darkness in the Soviet gulag: how am I responsible? What moral deficiency of mine has contributed to this? Get your life in order. Then move on to your family, your group of friends, your colleagues, your community.

  Find a husband/wife, build a family, have children (preferably lots of them), and transmit your culture to them. Teach them why they are free and prosperous, and teach them the duties which are inherent in that privilege.

Do all of this and then — God willing, with fear and trembling — we can start our struggle up the hill to rebuild the city that was once the light of the world.

notes

0. One of the greatest and subtlest rhetorical sleights of hand in the modern era is to conflate these two, in an intellectually dishonest attempt to stain the latter with the unquestionable immorality of the former.

1. This is always the sense of term I use here.

2. That is a human universal, from the dawn of time. Every culture has at some point been exploiter and exploited, but a select few, over the course of centuries, have evolved a moral and civic code which breaks away from such brutal systems.

   Examples abound all over the world of nations whose momentary economic prosperity was completely destroyed by the collapse or lack altogether of their system of values.

3. I am an immigrant — needless to say, a legal one. I left my country a decade ago and today I am a citizen of the great nation of Italy, where most of my family originally comes from, themselves immigrants who left for the American continent at the end of the XIX century.

   There is an idea that migrants should support illegal immigration. It is absurd, and verges on the insulting. The last thing someone who has gone through the immigration process wants is for criminals, who completely disregard the laws of his new homeland, to be accepted and welcomed, bringing with them the very same terrible ideas he has worked so hard to escape from.

4. I live very close to an infamous neighborhood that has a heavy concentration of just this type of “immigrants” (many of them illegal, of course). The news reports are filled with, and I have witnessed several times, the horrors routinely perpetrated by them: violence, robbery, drug trafficking, sexual assault, rape, etc. It is generally accepted that this is an area that women, children, the elderly, and other disadvantaged groups must avoid.

5. The claim that the situation in Ceuta was not caused by the policies of the Spanish government is absurd. A few months back Pedro Sánchez, its absolute failure of a Prime Minister, approved a plan to legalize the status of 500,000 “undocumented migrants” (read: criminals), hailing it “an act of justice” (war is peace, freedom is slavery). Then, in June, just a month before the invasion, its Supreme Court ruled that immediate expulsion should not be exacted on those invading via the sea, rather than a land barrier.

   To pretend that these were not the direct cause, as the government has in its attack against Italy and other countries trying to protect their citizens from Spain's systematic failures, is to mock the intelligence of those they spitefully accuse of not being allies.

6. ὥσπερ γὰρ καὶ τελεωθὲν βέλτιστον τῶν ζῴων ὁ ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν, οὕτω καὶ χωρισθεὶς νόμου καὶ δίκης χείριστον πάντων.

   For as man is the best of the animals when perfected, so he is the worst of all when sundered from law and justice.

7. To give an idea of how precipitous that change is, the rate was 2.77 as recently as 1976, already down from 3 in 1964.

8. The latest estimates from Ceuta are that the number of criminals who crossed the border is almost the same as the number of inhabitants of the exclave: about 80,000.

9. If you think this is an exaggeration, go watch Cristopher Nolan's Odyssey for the latest not-so-subtle presentation of this theme (as one masterful interviewer recently put it, “a bard for a civilization at dusk”), or simply pay close attention to just about any modern work of art.