BERLIN — It’s a nightmare scenario for President Joe Biden: Just ahead of the election, a migrant commits a grisly crime that captures national attention and is seized upon by the far right.
For his German counterpart, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, that’s just what happened. Nine days before the European election this month, an Afghan migrant stabbed a police officer to death in a city square, reigniting the highly charged debate on the country’s asylum policies.
The attack in Germany was just the kind of unpredictable incident centrist parties fear most, serving to kindle voters’ long-standing fears that the right to asylum, enshrined in international law, is driving uncontrolled migration. Those fears have enervated Scholz’s fragile, left-leaning political coalition, just as they have sapped political will from European and American leaders to resist calls to impose ever-stricter border measures.
As elections loom in the U.S., the U.K. and France, the fraught politics of migration are a key issue animating voters on both sides of the Atlantic and fueling far-right parties that promise to put an end to migration driven by asylum — just as climate change and global conflicts have propelled the number of displaced people to record highs…
James Angelos et al, Politico, June 20, 2024
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