Bulgaria Builds Border Fence; Changes Tune on Immigration

James Kirkpatrick
VDARE
August 5, 2015

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It’s amazing how all these much poorer countries keep managing to do what American leaders swear is impossible.

Stretching far into the horizon, this is the super-fence blocking thousands of migrants hoping for a new life in Europe.

As police in Calais struggle to contain thousands trying to storm the Eurotunnel in their desperation to get into Britain, the Bulgarian authorities are shoring up their border with Turkey.

The barriers around the ferry and Eurotunnel terminals in Northern France are breached night after night by migrants trying to reach the UK.

By contrast, the new section of fence being constructed to seal Bulgaria’s entire border is designed to appear all but impregnable.

[How Bulgaria keeps migrants out – with 50 miles of razor wire: Fence along Turkish border that is 15ft tall and 5th wide said to have kept out 500 people in a month, Daily Mail, August 2, 2015]

One of the most common tricks in the immigration debate is how open borders advocates disingenuously mix up practicality with morality. Instead of forthrightly arguing, “we don’t want you to defend the border,” they say, “it is impossible to have meaningful border security.”

This is a favorite argument of “moderate” Republicans who don’t want to appear weak to their constituents but at the same time don’t want to be forced to do anything meaningful on border security. So they say, “we can’t keep illegals out,” thus crafting an image of hard headed practicality instead of cowardice.

But of course, we can keep illegals out. And now, we can point to specific countries who are doing it, notably Hungary, Bulgaria, and of course, Israel.

An increasingly desperate Main Stream Media is rallying behind what the late Lawrence Auster called the “huddled clichés” of pro-invasion propaganda. Here’s one you may recognize. A wall is a Very Bad Thing and practically the same as tyranny.

Back in the late 1990s, when Nikolay Radulov was a deputy minister of the interior, part of his job was overseeing the dismantling of the old wall, a Cold War relic that had been the southern edge of the Iron Curtain. It was actually two fences, stretching across the entire land border, with a 500-meter minefield between them, designed to prevent residents of Communist nations from sneaking into the West.

The fence was dismantled piece by piece, he said, “and we very carefully removed each of the mines, one by one.”

Now, as a professor of national and international security at New Bulgarian University, Mr. Radulov is watching with some disbelief as the new barrier rises to take its place.

“The theory then was that it was antidemocratic to have these kind of devices along the border,” he said. “And of course, we were good democrats.”

[Bulgaria puts up a new wall, but this one keeps people out, by Rick Lyman, New York Times, April 5, 2015]

Again, “democracy” isn’t the people having what they want. It’s unelected elites, like European Union officials, forcing nation-breaking changes down the throats of an unwilling populace. That’s what freedom is all about!

One highly amusing aspect of all this is the last time Bulgaria was in the headlines because of immigration, it was because President Rosen Plevneliev was lecturing the United Kingdom that it needed to allow his countrymen to enter Britain.

The president of Bulgaria has made a stinging intervention in the UK’s immigration debate, attacking what he calls David Cameron’s attempts to pander to nationalists – and warning the PM to consider how history will judge him.

In an exclusive interview with the Observer, less than two weeks before the lifting of all restrictions on Bulgarians and Romanians seeking work in the UK, Rosen Plevneliev called for Britain to stay true to its legacy as “a great global power that pioneered integration” and not play on people’s fears. In a direct warning to Cameron, he said: “Isolating Britain and damaging Britain’s reputation is not the right history to write.”

[Bulgaria issues fierce rebuke to David Cameron over migrants, by Daniel Boffey, The Guardian, December 21, 2013]

It’s amazing how one’s attitude towards immigration can change when it’s the existence of your own country on the line.