No one believes in entirely closed borders. Every country in the world requires and allows immigration: to succour the truly vulnerable, to reunite families and to fill vital gaps in their workforces, whether for Python coders or hospital bottom-washers. But no one seriously believes in completely open borders either, if by that one means letting in anyone who turns up.
Germany got a taste of what that would mean in 2015, when Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to welcome a stream of asylum-seekers arriving at its borders from Syria and elsewhere via Turkey and Lebanon. Under the threat of a political backlash to the arrival of more than 1m people, many of whom were technically economic migrants, and despite her pledge that “we will manage this”, she promised during last year's election that “what happened in 2015 cannot, should not and must not happen again.”
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