Key Takeaways:
Anti-immigration violence from an English market town to South African townships is pushing governments worldwide toward tighter borders, threatening to end a three-decade era of mass migration.
The global migrant population has nearly doubled to 304 million since 1990, and a wave of anti-foreigner unrest from England to South Africa suggests the modern era of open borders is drawing to a close. Riots in Thetford, a Norfolk town of about 25,500 people, erupted after crowds angered by plans to house asylum seekers at a nearby Royal Air Force site attacked buildings where migrants were believed to be sheltered. Images of migrants streaming across the border from Morocco into the Spanish city of Ceuta prompted Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to introduce border controls against non-Europeans traveling from Spain.
"The message is clear. Resistance to migration means that borders are going to be less open everywhere," said Walter Russell Mead, Global View Columnist at The Wall Street Journal and Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute.
The backlash is not confined to wealthy Western nations. More than 178,000 immigrants have left South Africa for other African countries in recent months, many departing "voluntarily" in the face of mob violence. Iran and Pakistan combined returned more than a million Afghan immigrants and refugees to their country of origin in 2025 alone, while the Dominican Republic's policies on Haitian migrants are tougher than those of the United States. Bangladesh is resisting Indian efforts to forcibly return alleged illegal migrants across the roughly 2,500-mile shared border.
United Nations estimates put the global migrant count at 304 million in 2024, up from 154 million in 1990. The United States hosts the most at 52.4 million, followed by Germany with 16.8 million, Saudi Arabia with 13.7 million, the United Kingdom with 11.8 million, France with 9.2 million and Spain with 8.9 million.
History suggests the current trajectory is unsustainable. The United States, which had largely permitted immigration since the Revolution, began restricting entry in the late 19th century as the foreign-born share of its population passed 14 percent. The draconian Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 slammed the doors shut, cutting immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere by more than 90 percent. The foreign-born share of the U.S. population fell to 4.7 percent by 1970 and did not recover meaningfully until the late 1960s.
Mead argues that claims attributing opposition to elevated migration to racial or religious bigotry miss the point. Black South Africans rioting against migrants from other majority-black sub-Saharan countries are not so different from the white anti-immigrant rioters in Thetford, he wrote.
For the United States, the question is how to build a rational and humane immigration policy that is also politically sustainable. Mead proposes capping total numbers, including refugees and those already illegally present who are legalized, with the ceiling dropping when domestic unemployment rises. Some slots would be reserved for people with special talents and skills, with citizens of the Western Hemisphere receiving preference over global immigrants and families of current citizens getting an additional boost. Mass refugee resettlements, such as the roughly 100,000 Somalis admitted after 1990 or the currently active program for white South Africans, would end.
The stakes extend beyond politics into labor markets. American immigration advocates have long argued that falling birthrates create a need for more immigrant labor, but those arguments carry less weight as artificial intelligence accelerates automation. Still, Mead contends the United States needs scientific, entrepreneurial and technological immigrant talent to keep its lead in the technological revolution, while the ambition of less-skilled immigrants remains an important driver of economic growth.
The last time an era of mass global migration ended, the consequences were severe. In 1900 migration was largely unregulated worldwide; by World War II almost no country was welcoming immigrants. "Reasonable action to restrict and control migration today will, one hopes, avoid the excessive crackdowns, to say nothing of mob violence, that the world has seen," Mead wrote. "But time is short. Countries that fail to act thoughtfully now will likely face a backlash in the near future."
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
