“We have seen the creation of new political movements, which offer simple answers to the most complicated questions. Simple, radical and attractive. The migration crisis provides them with a growing number of arguments.

“More and more people are starting to believe that only strong-handed authority, anti-European and anti-liberal in spirit, with a tendency towards overt authoritarianism, is capable of stopping the wave of illegal migration.”

“If people believe them, that only they can offer an effective solution to the migration crisis, they will also believe anything else they say. The stakes are very high. And time is short.”

EU migration crisis: what are the key issues?
Jon Henley. June 27, 2018

The instability, insecurity, terrorism, poverty, famine and climate change besetting large parts of Africa and the Middle East are the root causes of migration, but EU governments have come around to this too late, engaging essentially in damage-limitation exercises at our borders.

The migration crisis threatens to destroy the EU. We must not let it.
Antonio Tajani, June 28, 2018

I hope the EU Summit goes well tomorrow European Council

“As you go from the center of cities out through the suburbs and into rural areas, you traverse in a linear fashion from Democratic to Republican places,” observed Jonathan Rodden, a Stanford political scientist. According to an estimate from Mark Muro of the Brookings Institution, the electorate is typically equal parts Democrat and Republican at about 900 people per square mile. The exact number is higher in more Republican and lower in more Democratic states, but majorities tend to flip from blue to red roughly where commuter suburbs give way to “exurban” sprawl.

Higher population density predicts higher Democratic vote share even in small cities in deep-red counties in deep-red states.

Under Mr. Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has singled out urban Democratic strongholds for terrorizing deportation raids under the pretext that so-called sanctuary policies imperil public safety by attracting and shielding dangerous criminal immigrants.

Thousands of peaceful city dwellers have been rounded up, tearing apart families, striking fear into immigrant communities, hobbling criminal investigations and generally sowing dread and disorder. But the issue is not only that people in cities are getting hurt; it’s also that city people are mindful of the interests of marginalized populations outside cities — at the border or in remote state prisons — and would protect them if cities weren’t democratically underrepresented.

The administration’s “zero tolerance” border crackdown has separated thousands of parents from their children, inflicting unspeakable grief and permanent trauma to deter “improper entry,” a misdemeanor of no more gravity than “disorderly conduct.”

Many of Mr. Trump’s victims are asylum seekers who have trekked thousands of miles to protect their children from sexual violence and gang conscription, only to have their extraordinarily fortitude and love rewarded with sadistic abuse justified by a fake immigration crisis spoken into being through dehumanizing lies.

Why Do We Value Country Folk More Than City People?