We need to build a wall, we need to keep illegals out,” Donald Trump said at last Thursday's GOP debate. But before we freak out, let's look at what's happening an ocean away, in Britain.
Until 21 years ago, Britain had a wall between itself and the rest of the world: the English Channel. Britain and France tore down that wall by building the Channel Tunnel — and ever since, illegal migrants from all over the world have risked everything to get across. This isn't a failure. It's a success.
For years, Britons thought that Channel Tunnel a boondoggle. The project, hatched by Margaret Thatcher and Francois Mitterrand, came years late and billions over budget. It went bankrupt, and got a government bailout.
Worst, it was a bust: As the British press crowed for the tunnel's 10th anniversary, only 7.3 million people rode through the tunnel on a Eurostar train in 2004, a fraction of the 22.3 million forecast.
But the tunnel has changed Britain and France forever — and when the trains aren't working, it's an international crisis.
Europe's two capital cities are an easy, cheap two hours and 15 minutes away from each other — less time and money than it takes to get from New York to Washington.
Tourism has soared, with French visitors to Britain up by a quarter in the last decade. With airports at capacity, it's a good thing that Eurostar ridership has soared, too, to 10.4 million last year, eliminating many short flights.
And because it's so easy to get back, 400,000 French people live in London — young bankers, lawyers, waiters and chefs who can earn a much better living while not giving up on their hometown.
It's normal to come to London from Paris for a meeting and go home that day.
But making London closer to Europe made it closer to the Middle Eastern and African migrants who are desperate to get there, too, and not for a weekend of clubbing but for a chance at a real life.
I never feel more grateful to be an American than when I'm waiting in passport check to get from Paris to London. In and around the Paris train station, migrants wait — they wait for someone to drop their passport and their train ticket, they wait to somehow get on that train. When going from London to Paris, the passport folk wave people through — because nobody wants to escape from London to Paris. The world's desperate people are all going the other way, closer and closer to Western law, order, freedom and jobs.
It's worse on the French coast, where freight trucks wait to enter the same tunnel to Britain. For years, migrants have set up camp, waiting to stow away. But thanks to global war and failed economies, the problem has reached crisis levels — with 5,000 migrants waiting to take their chance now, up from 800 last year.
Every night, French police try to deter people from making a run for it — and every night, hundreds try, often incurring gruesome injuries from barbed wire. Ten have died trying, or waiting, this summer.
France and Britain are rightly upset. Britain complains that France doesn't do enough to police migrants on its own territory. France complains that Britain is, well, there, providing a lure.
And it's obviously true that Britain can't have uncontrolled immigration. Even if Britain had a bigger asylum or immigration program, most of the people waiting to cling to a freight train about to go under the sea likely wouldn't qualify.
And yet. It's impossible not to admire someone like Mima, 26, from Ethiopia, who told the Times that he trekked across Sudan and Libya to cross the Mediterranean and then made his way from Italy.
“The UK is not paradise,” he said. “I know it's not safe to jump on a moving train.”
Or Akbrat, from Eritrea, who said, after being told that she was lucky an altercation with French police hadn't killed her, that “I'll be lucky when I'm in England.”
As for America: When Trump rants that “the Mexican government is sending criminals” across the border, the opposite is true. The problem with uncontrolled migration is that bad countries lose their best people: the ones willing to die, or to live a life that most of us would consider miserable, to get a portion of what we take for granted.
This piece originally appeared in New York Post
