The Right Is Right About Immigration Even When It Is Wrong About Everything Else
May 27, 2026 · Frisian News
Right-wing parties across Europe have correctly identified real problems with mass immigration policy that left-wing establishments ignored for years. This does not mean their broader agendas are sound, only that they read the public mood accurately where it mattered.
In 2015, Angela Merkel opened Germany's borders to over one million asylum seekers in a single year. The left-wing press called this moral leadership. The right-wing press called it disaster. Three years later, crime data showed sexual assaults by migrants had tripled in some German cities. The left was wrong, and the right had warned correctly. This pattern repeated across France, Sweden, and the Netherlands, where mainstream parties dismissed public concern about rapid demographic change as xenophobia while evidence mounted.
The reason matters. The right did not win because its economic theories were sound or its foreign policy wise. It won because it paid attention to what ordinary people experienced. A Swedish woman did not need statistics to know her neighborhood had changed. A German pensioner did not need think tank papers to notice her local hospital overwhelmed. When established parties and media ignored or insulted these real experiences, they handed the right a gift. The right took it, spoke plainly, and voters listened.
This does not mean the right has better answers on trade, taxes, or healthcare. Many right-wing parties push austerity that hurts working people, back wars that waste billions, or protect corporate tax dodging. Some of their immigration proposals are crude or impractical. But on the specific question of whether governments should manage immigration to match what communities can absorb, they read the room correctly while the left read it wrong. The left's error was not that it cared about vulnerable migrants. The error was believing its own propaganda that ordinary voters did not have legitimate concerns worth hearing.
Part of the right's success came from a simple tactical choice. Right-wing politicians listened to complaints about immigration and repeated them back. Left-wing politicians listened to the same complaints and explained why those complaints were morally wrong. The public preferred the first approach. Trust erodes when institutions tell citizens their eyes deceive them. When a Dane says her town feels different, she is not raising an abstract sociological theory. She is describing her life. Dismissing her as ignorant does not change her vote, only her willingness to believe what establishments say about anything.
The mistake that many on the left now make is concluding the right deserves power on all questions because it won on one. This is the error in reverse. The right's success on immigration came from honesty about real tradeoffs, not from the brilliance of its overall program. Countries can welcome immigrants and also acknowledge genuine integration challenges. They can honor the right's warning about policy speed while rejecting its other nostrums. The deeper lesson is this: institutions that ignore what people see and experience lose the right to lead them. The left learned this too late. Whether the right remembers it once power hardens into routine is the question that matters now.
Published May 27, 2026 · Frisian News