Panel was moderated by Dave Rubin and included multiple former Trump administration officials
The EU-US Forum, a newly formed nonprofit organization launched to shine light on the harmful policies coming out of the EU to stop them from spreading to the US, hosted a panel discussion in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday morning to explore migration policy in the EU and the similar issues the United States and Europe are experiencing related to border security.
The panel was moderated by The Rubin Report’s Dave Rubin and included multiple former Trump administration officials. The panelists repeatedly blasted Joe Biden’s open borders agenda and discussed how far-left leaders in Brussels are pursuing the same failed policies abroad.
The panelists were:
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Matt Mowers, Founding Board Member of the EU-US Forum and Former Senior White House Advisor at the U.S. Department of State
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Joe Grogan, Senior Advisor of the EU-US Forum and Former Director of the Domestic Policy Council of the United States
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Chad Wolf, Former Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security and America First Policy Institute Executive Director, Chief Strategy Officer, and Center For Homeland Security & Immigration Chair
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Kara Frederick, Director of Tech Policy at The Heritage Foundation
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James Carafano, Foreign Policy Expert at The Heritage Foundation
They also touched on polling released by the EU-US Forum earlier this week that showed Europeans are yearning for conservative policy solutions ahead of their EU elections next week (June 6-9) and as EU member states struggle with the cost of living, illegal immigration, government censorship, and food production issues.
Watch the full panel by clicking HERE and view some of the highlights below.
The immigration topic has become something that I talk about on the show all the time, I’m very interested in. And I would say, especially in light of some of the world events, probably post-October 7th, it’s something that everybody should be thinking about because we need to know who is in our country. It’s really as simple as that.
You can’t have a country if you don’t have borders. I think our European friends, and we’ll get into this in just a bit, our European friends are really realizing that you know, 10 years post allowing millions and millions of people in, they now have cultural issues, they have crime issues, and they have social service issues and a litany of other problems.
DAVE RUBIN: You guys have put out some polling recently showing that really the number one issue for people in Europe right now is the immigration issue. How do you think that — well, first off, I take it, you’re not surprised by that. But how do you think it will affect the upcoming election?
MATT MOWERS: That’s gonna have a dramatic impact. And it’s, you know, primarily driven by immigration, but really a lot of the issues which are the cornerstone of what we focus on. I mean, you asked about government censorship. We asked the question of, and we polled in five countries, by the way, we were in Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. And we asked the question, ‘Are you more concerned today than you were previously about government censorship?’ Over 60% of respondents in most of the countries said, ‘Yes.’ We asked, ‘Are you concerned that radical policies on restrictions and regulations on energy is going to be a national security issue?’ something that we have the same discussion right here in the United States today when we talk about a ban on LNG and a whole number of other issues, over 60% said, ‘Yes.’ We then said, ‘Do you believe there needs to be stronger controls on border security? And are you concerned about illegal migration?’ Over 75% in almost every single country said, ‘Yes.’ In fact, the only country where it’s a little bit lower, and was still in the high 60s was Italy, and you actually have an ascendant Conservative Right, trying to make some changes right now in immigration already there. And so what illuminates to us and you look at then support levels for political parties, there’s an ascendant Right today, in part because of the policies of these issues. They know that the European Union, they know that many of the governments in their own countries have failed to address these core issues around individual liberty and the security around border control. And so they’re looking for a change.
The Elites for too long lied to their populations about what they were doing, and the consequences of what they were doing, and tried to convince people to trust them, that there were no cultural differences, there would be no increase in crime, that this was, you know, consistent with values, the European values, American values. Well, you know, law and order is consistent with European values. It’s consistent with American values. And what we see now is the tolerance of those populations has just run out.
The dependency upon social service programs, the crime, the rise in lawlessness, both here in the United States, this absurd situation of luxury hotels in New York City being filled up, you know, petitions being delivered to the mayor of Denver with demands on the part of immigrants, you think about the libertarian wonderland that the United States was in 1924 versus all the social services we have available now and all the demands and the tremendous large asset the Biden administration has put in place to entice people to come here. I think that the populations have, the general populations have just had enough of being lied to, and their generosity of spirit has finally broken and they have to have this stop because their quality of life has deteriorated so much and their faith in elected leaders to address this honestly, has been exhausted.
I mean, look, countries that — leaders and policymakers that love their country, want to secure their country, want to have national sovereignty, these are not extreme positions. You know, if you go back 20, 25 years ago, even probably less, these were positions that most politicians here in the US and elsewhere embraced. It’s only because I think the Left and the Progressive Party have gone so far left that they’ve tried to paint, look, if you want to have some control over your borders if you want to understand who’s coming into the country, that you want to actually vet people coming into your country, understand where they’re going, understand what the value is that they provide to the country that they’re coming. These are not radical positions. But of course, if you are for those, you get painted as being radical. So what I say to that is, yes, I’m radical. I’m going to embrace that all day every day. Because, again, and Matt talked about the polling I think if you look at a majority of Americans or EU folks, right? They want that this is what they are craving right now. And it could be a reaction to the far Left and the Progressive [Party] of where they’ve taken those different countries over the last three years here in the US, or it could just be this is common sense.
You know, on a personal note, my grandmother’s from Mexico, my grandfather is of Latin American extraction, El Salvador. And there used to be the whole assimilation, integration, you know, adopting legitimate American values. And at this point, and it goes with the terrorism issue and the counterterrorism apparatus that should be working against this, at this point, you have people come in and sort of say, ‘No, I’m gonna retain everything about the country that I voluntarily left, and bring it over here instead of embedding within the fabric and the social fabric of America as well.’ And I think we saw that in Europe, you know, I remember listening to those sob stories from the BBC, of all the migrant boats in the Mediterranean.
And, you know, even me with my background, it was 2014. I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, you know, like, help the people out.’ And yet, we’re getting reporting out of West Palm Beach, saying someone claiming asylum was trying to lure an 11-year-old — did manage to do it, and they’re committing crime after crime. You have reports, way back when there was reporting that Venezuela was opening up its prisons and letting them come over here. And now Daily Wire is saying, ‘Yeah, there’s a drop in crime in Venezuela.’ And correlation does not always equal causation. But this matters, and it matters to our security situation. So the more that we can expose this, the better but we’re still not there yet. The problem is only growing.
Part of the problem, why it’s hard to close the deal is because it’s really hard to convince people that the strategy in here is a real thing. Because the real strategy is really very simple. It’s to create a right of global migration, that anybody in the world can move anybody in the world they want. Because the consequence of that is, is that national governments would be overwhelmed and unable to control that. And then the response to that is we would just have global governance. Now, that’s, that is really the agenda. It’s hard to convince people that that’s true because it just sounds so fantastic. But here’s the proof of that is look at how the — let’s just look at the United States and put Europe aside for a second. But look at how American politics has changed over the last 30 years. 30 years ago, immigration was the third rail of politics, you cannot get any Democrat or any Republican on any stage to debate this. And the reason for that was, is immigration was demographically was different all over the country. Everybody had different concerns, and it was like, just don’t go there. It’s just bad politics. And then the Democratic Party then says, ‘Well, this is an opportunity for amnesty’ right?
But if you remember, like 20 years ago, the Democratic Party in the United States said, ‘We want a secure border.’ They voted for the Secure Fence Act, and this was the deal, give us amnesty, and we will, we will secure the border. And today, you cannot find a Democrat that believes that securing the border is valid. And so what has driven that massive shift in policy direction? And it is top-down. And the reality is, if you’re on the Left, you have to look in the mirror and say, ‘Dude, I’ve been played.’ That they’re not trying to be nice to immigrants. They’re not trying to be more humanitarian, they’re not trying to give us more workers to help with our economy. They’re actually driving an agenda that’s actually going to hurt me as an American.
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