A group of migrants on the coastal rocks near the border post of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on August 2.
HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP
A scathing U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee report backs a probable laboratory origin for COVID-19, finds no quantitative basis for the six-foot rule, and argues that officials overstated the vaccines’ ability to prevent infection and transmission.
The images from Ceuta are extraordinary and frightening. Tens of thousands of people moved toward a small European territory on the North African coast, many entering through the sea, swimming around border barriers or walking through shallow coastal waters. Spain’s Interior Ministry estimated that approximately 50,000 people entered Ceuta within twenty-four hours. Local estimates placed the total over several days even higher.
Calling such an event merely “migration” risks concealing its political significance. Migration ordinarily describes the movement of individuals and families from one country to another. What occurred in Ceuta looked less like an orderly migratory process than a mass breach of a sovereign border. That distinction matters.
One of the most revealing aspects of the images was not simply the crossing of the border itself but the manner in which some immigrants presented it.
Videos circulated in Arabic social media showing young people documenting their journey, celebrating their arrival and making signs of victory after reaching European territory. The crossing was represented as an accomplishment: the successful defeat of a border and the triumphant arrival in Europe. This symbolism should not be dismissed:
A border crossing celebrated as a victory implies that the authority of the receiving state has been defeated. It turns illegal entry into a spectacle that can be reproduced, circulated, and imitated. Every successful crossing becomes advertising for the next one.
It is understandable that people living in poorer states may want to reach Europe. Europe offers political stability, higher wages, public infrastructure, education, healthcare, legal protections, and extensive social assistance. Most human beings, placed in the same position, would prefer a safer and more prosperous life.
But the desire for a better life does not create the right to enter another country.
There are billions of people whose material circumstances are worse than those of the average European. Europe cannot logically grant residence to everyone who would benefit economically from moving there. If economic inequality itself establishes a right of entry, then no enforceable border can be morally justified.
The decisive question is therefore not whether migration may benefit the migrant. It usually does. The question is whether a sovereign society retains the authority to determine who enters, on what basis, and under what conditions.
Without that authority, democratic sovereignty becomes largely fictional. Citizens may vote on taxation, housing, schools, public services, and social policy, but they cannot determine the number of people among whom those resources will be distributed.
A border is not simply a line on a map. It defines the jurisdiction within which rights, duties, taxation, representation, and solidarity operate. If membership in that political community can be acquired through the unilateral act of crossing its border, citizenship gradually loses its institutional meaning.
Spain approved an extraordinary regularization program intended to grant legal status to approximately 500,000 undocumented migrants. More than one million people were subsequently reported to have applied. When a government regularizes large numbers of people who originally entered or remained without legal status, it inevitably creates expectations about future regularizations. Even where the law contains a formal cut-off date, potential migrants may reasonably conclude that today’s illegality could become tomorrow’s legal residence.
This is the central problem with repeated amnesties: they weaken the credibility of the legal migration system. Governments announce that illegal entry is prohibited but periodically reward successful illegal residence with legal status. The official message is deterrence.
Spain may describe regularization as an act of humanitarianism or economic pragmatism. Yet the consequences extend beyond Spain. Because Spain is part of the European Union, decisions affecting admission and legal status may influence the entire European political space.
Europe has constructed some of the most extensive welfare states in the world. Residents may receive subsidized healthcare, education, housing support, income assistance, family benefits, and numerous other publicly financed services. These systems depend on high taxation, administrative capacity, economic productivity, and a significant level of social trust. At the same time, influential sections of European politics treat strict border enforcement as morally suspect.
The two positions cannot be expanded without limit simultaneously.
Milton Friedman identified the fundamental difference between “free immigration to jobs” and “free immigration to welfare.” In his argument, the relatively open immigration regime of the United States before 1914 functioned in a radically different institutional environment. Migrants generally entered knowing they had to obtain work and support themselves. The modern welfare state, by contrast, guarantees residents access to resources financed from a common public fund.
A person deciding whether to migrate does not compare wages alone. He compares entire social systems. He considers not only possible earnings but housing, healthcare, schools, legal protections, benefits, the probability of removal, and the likelihood that illegal status will eventually be regularized.
The more comprehensive Europe’s guarantees become, and the less credible its enforcement appears, the stronger the attraction becomes. This is not a moral accusation against migrants. It is a predictable response to incentives. The moral failure belongs primarily to European governments that create contradictory rules and then act surprised when people respond rationally to them.
Classical liberalism has strong reasons to support the movement of workers. A person willing to relocate, work, compete, create value, and support himself can enrich the receiving society. Labor mobility can address shortages, increase productivity, and allow individuals to escape stagnant economic conditions. But the right to compete for employment is different from an unconditional right to receive support from a welfare system built by another political community.
Europe’s political left frequently collapses these categories. It invokes the economic contribution of productive immigrants to justify policies that make insufficient distinctions among workers, refugees, rejected asylum seekers, and people entering without authorization.
A coherent liberal immigration system would be open to work but strict regarding dependency. It would welcome people who possess needed skills, have employment, respect the legal order, and demonstrate a realistic capacity for integration. It would protect genuine refugees facing persecution. But it would not treat physical arrival as sufficient grounds for permanent membership in the welfare state.
Rights must be connected to legal status, contribution, and obligation. Otherwise, solidarity ceases to be reciprocal and becomes an entitlement imposed upon people who were never consulted.
European elites often attribute the rise of right-wing and anti-EU parties to prejudice, misinformation, or manipulation. These might exist, but the explanation is incomplete.
Voters can see that governments frequently fail to enforce laws they themselves enacted. They see asylum procedures lasting for years, rejected applicants remaining indefinitely, municipalities struggling with housing and schools, and political leaders refusing to discuss costs or limits honestly.
When mainstream parties deny visible problems, they transfer political ownership of those problems to more radical movements.
This threatens the European project itself. An EU unable to protect its common external border will produce national border controls within Europe. A Union that demands solidarity without effective control will create resentment between member states. A political system that suppresses legitimate debate will radicalize that debate.
Italy’s border controls following the Ceuta crisis illustrate this dynamic. When the external frontier is perceived to have failed, internal states protect themselves. The ultimate consequence of uncontrolled external migration may therefore be the destruction of internal European mobility.
Open internal borders require secure external borders. Schengen cannot survive indefinitely if individual governments believe that other members are transferring uncontrolled migration onward.
The crisis demonstrated how quickly a small European territory could be overwhelmed, how rapidly information could mobilize tens of thousands, and how one border failure could produce diplomatic conflict across the continent.
Europe needs clarity. First, illegal entry must not become the most effective route to legal residence. Applications for asylum should, wherever practically and legally possible, be processed at external borders or outside EU territory. Those without a valid protection claim should be returned promptly.
Second, labor migration should be expanded only through legal and selective channels based on economic requirements, qualifications, and integration capacity.
Third, welfare eligibility for new migrants should be connected to lawful residence, contribution, and a reasonable period of economic participation, while emergency care and basic human dignity remain protected.
Fourth, Europe must develop the independent capacity to protect its external borders rather than relying excessively on neighboring governments. Morocco, Turkey, Belarus, and other transit states should not possess a de facto ability to use migration pressure as leverage against Europe.
Fifth, governments must stop pretending that every limit is an act of racism. Borders, deportations, eligibility rules, and numerical restrictions are normal components of a functioning state.
Finally, Europe must communicate a credible message: entering illegally will not provide an advantage over applying legally.
The real debate is not between people who care about migrants and people who do not. It is between those who believe compassion must operate within sustainable institutions and those who believe moral intentions can substitute for limits.
Europe may choose an extensive welfare state. It may choose extremely open immigration. But it cannot indefinitely maintain both without producing fiscal strain, political conflict, and declining public trust.
The welfare state is not an abstract reservoir of unlimited resources. It is financed by workers, taxpayers, and businesses. It survives only as long as citizens believe that contribution and benefit remain connected and that the rules apply to everyone.
Ceuta should therefore be understood as more than a dramatic episode on a distant Mediterranean shore. It is a warning about sovereignty, incentives, and Europe’s capacity for self-preservation.
A society that refuses to defend its borders will eventually lose control over its welfare system, its self-determination, and its future. A society that distributes membership without consent will erode the meaning of citizenship. And a political class that treats every demand for limits as immoral will eventually deliver power to forces far less moderate than those it silenced.
Europe must choose law over faits accomplis, controlled immigration over illegal mass entry, and sustainable solidarity over unlimited entitlement.
Without borders, democratic sovereignty becomes meaningless. Without contribution, the welfare state becomes exploitation. And without the courage to impose limits, Europe will not remain generous; it will simply become weaker.
