The trouble with ‘taking back control’

I sympathised with Leave voters who yearned to ‘take back control’ of British borders. After all, if being a country means anything, it surely entails first and foremost a clear understanding of who comes under that country’s protection — and who doesn’t. Otherwise a country is just a patch on a map.

Yet I’ve always found Leavers’ high hopes for reduced immigration heartbreaking. Cutting ties with the EU was never going to limit the migrants apt to put the greatest pressure on British borders this century: immigrants from outside the EU, especially from high-birth-rate countries in Africa and the Middle East — who, absent an unlikely new agreement by the end of the Brexit transition period, will only be more difficult to return to the Continent.

Back in 1984, the editorial board of America’s right-leaning Wall Street Journal argued for a five-word constitutional amendment: ‘There shall be open borders.’ But such outright support for goodie bags brimming with bottled water and ‘Welcome to the USA!’ coffee mugs on the American side of the Rio Grande is rare.