After more than a week of rioting, looting and high tensions across the United Kingdom, the nation’s most severe bout of unrest in a decade came to an end on Aug. 8. After a 17-year-old boy fatally stabbed three young girls and wounded several others, misinformation regarding the killer’s identity circulated widely on the internet and sparked riots across the country. Among other untruths, the chief rumor was that the perpetrator was a Muslim asylum seeker. The police later revealed that he was in fact Christian and born in Wales, but it was too late. Anti-immigrant and Islamophobic groups had taken to the streets in droves, and two nights of clashes between police and counterprotesters ensued.
More than 1,000 people were arrested in clashes that included far-right groups explicitly targeting racial minorities and their places of worship. Anti-immigrant rioters attacked hotels harboring migrants, besieged mosques and beat people of Color in the streets. These acts were accompanied by widespread looting as well as assaults on police officers and counterprotesters, who came out in force to resist the wave of racial unrest boiling over across the country.
The resulting severity of the riots, sparked by misinformation, indicates just how high tensions over immigration in the U.K. are. Anti-immigrant rhetoric in the U.K. gave fuel to extremist groups such as the English Defence League, which was an anti-Islam extremist group dedicated to expelling immigrants from the U.K. in the 2010s. Immigration was also a major driver for the U.K.’s decision to exit the European Union in March of 2019, and anti-immigrant rhetoric continues to permeate the U.K.’s government. The high costs necessary to take care of its asylum-seeking population are another driver of hate among the British, a population that has become increasingly poor over the last decade. While the violence of the riots has subsided, newly inaugurated Prime Minister Keir Starmer must rapidly act to reform the nation’s asylum system while improving economic conditions for Britons, or else he could face another wave of nationwide riots.
Across the Atlantic, our nation is also embroiled in economic and political uncertainty as the southern border becomes a growing concern for Americans. Adding fuel to the fire, the United States features its own batch of anti-immigrant agitators — especially former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump has criticized the Biden administration’s border policy, dehumanized migrants and spread largely unchecked falsehoods about undocumented immigrants. The misinformation spread by extremists surrounding the U.K. murders was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and, as Trump and his party continue to fan the flames surrounding illegal immigration, the possibility of one tragic event leading to national unrest appears increasingly likely.
To curtail the possibility of a national wave of riots in the United States, Donald Trump and his party must eliminate its hate-filled, racist rhetoric toward migrants attempting to enter the U.S. from its political repertoire. Instead, Trump must offer actual solutions to address the migrant crisis and assuage the concerns of his constituents, rather than inflaming them. As this is unlikely to occur, Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party have an obligation to heavily counter their opponents’ vile assertions and work on separating the Harris administration from her predecessor’s failed border policy.
Much like the rioters in the U.K., Trump’s rhetoric about illegal immigration isn’t solution-oriented. By resorting to insults and spreading misinformation about migrants, Trump can deflect from the failures of his own border policy, which President Joe Biden left largely unchanged during his presidency. Furthermore, his adversarial stance toward immigration in general allows him to sidestep the much more challenging task: revitalizing the U.S.’s broken and outdated asylum system. Trump’s border wall — which continued construction under the Biden administration — is an expensive, embarrassing failure. Effective policymaking has never been Trump’s strong suit, yet he should be using his considerable reach over the party to motivate his colleagues to get to work building impactful solutions.
Whatever the Republicans end up doing, Democrats have an obligation to solve the problem. President Joe Biden won in 2020 by employing rhetoric that our nation was built on immigrants, sharply contrasting with Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Even so, Biden’s border policy left a lot to be desired. Although his shift to more restrictive border policies cooled crossings from an all-time high in late 2023 to numbers not seen since 2020, America’s asylum system remains overburdened and inefficient.
While the Democratic narrative on immigration has shifted, its policies toward immigration still lag. Harris may change that. Since assuming the role of Democratic presidential nominee, Harris has prioritized solidifying her stance on border security, advocating for comprehensive reform. This is aligned with her immigration record as District Attorney and prosecutor in California, where she was tough on crime yet supportive of immigration. To further differentiate herself from Trump, Harris must also directly resist the narratives surrounding illegal immigrants coming from Trump, something that Biden was unable to do effectively.
A misguided focus on immigration and Islamophobia derailed what could have been an opportunity to confront the U.K.’s continued struggles, such as rampant knife crime and limited opportunities for the nation’s working class. In the United States, channeling voters’ frustrations surrounding costs of living, health care, gun violence and an opioid crisis into a misguided crusade against immigration threatens to be equally dangerous. Even though we’re separated by thousands of miles, the issues facing Britons and Americans aren’t too dissimilar. In the lead-up to the 2024 election, we must choose solutions over bigotry and policy over hatred.
Maximilian Schenke is an Opinion Columnist who writes about whatever is on his mind, but typically focuses on politics. He loves receiving criticism or otherwise at maxsch@umich.edu.
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