Europe and America are reversing course on migration and Islamism. Is Australia?

Ten years ago, the political centre in most Western countries treated large-scale asylum migration as a humanitarian duty and a manageable cost. That consensus has broken. Centre-left governments in Denmark and the UK now run some of the toughest asylum rules in Europe. A centre-right government in Sweden reversed decades of open policy. Germany turns people back at its borders. The United States has banned entry from 19 countries and designated three branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist groups.

The claim in Australian debate is simple: the rest of the West has woken up, and Australia has not. This page tests that claim. It sets out what each country changed, what the numbers show, what critics say, and what Australia has and has not done. It separates two questions that often get mixed up. One is how many people a country lets in. The other is how it deals with Islamist organisations and extremists. Most migrants, and most Muslims, have nothing to do with the second question.

What did Denmark change, and is the "Danish model" working?

Denmark started early. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, a Social Democrat, has pursued what she called a "zero refugee" goal since 2019. Refugee status in Denmark is temporary and conditional. Family reunion is delayed. Permanent residence requires work and language skills.

On the numbers, it has worked on its own terms. Denmark granted 839 asylum residence permits in the first eleven months of 2025, a historic low, from 1,835 asylum requests. In 2024 it granted about 860 from 2,333 requests (The Local Denmark, 10 January 2026). In the 2015 crisis year, it granted almost 11,000 (AFP, January 2026).

Denmark also passed a "parallel societies" law in 2018. It targets housing estates where more than half of residents are of non-Western origin and that also have high unemployment, crime or low education. Public housing in the worst-rated estates must be cut by 40% by 2030, through sales, conversion or demolition. On 19 December 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that the law may amount to direct ethnic discrimination. The ruling is not final. Danish courts must now decide the case brought by residents of Copenhagen's Mjølnerparken estate.

Voters have not rewarded Frederiksen for her tough line. At the March 2026 election, her party got 21.9%, its worst result in more than a century. She formed a minority government only in June, after 69 days of talks.

Did Sweden's turnaround reduce gang violence?

Sweden is the clearest test case, because its government linked migration directly to crime. The centre-right coalition that took office in 2022, backed by the Sweden Democrats, blamed a wave of gang shootings on "decades of loose asylum laws and failed integration".

Asylum applications in Sweden fell 30% in 2025 to the lowest level since 1985. Asylum seekers and their families made up just 6% of immigrants in 2025, against 31% in 2018 (government figures reported by Al-Monitor, 9 January 2026).

Shootings are down sharply. Forty-six people were killed by gunfire in 2025, including ten in the Örebro school shooting in February, which was not gang-related. But the violence has shifted. Police say gangs now use bombs and arson against homes and businesses, partly because young recruits find that easier than gunfights. And police credit "new methods, additional resources and increased powers", including eavesdropping laws, for the drop. Migration policy works over years. Policing works faster. The data cannot yet separate the two.

In September 2026 the Swedish government lost office. The centre-left bloc won 176 of 349 seats. Its leader, Magdalena Andersson, has favoured a more restrictive line on migration than some of her own partners, so a full reversal is unlikely.

Why did German asylum claims halve?

Germany took in more asylum seekers than any other EU country in the last decade. First-time asylum claims fell from 229,751 in 2024 to 113,236 in 2025, a drop of 50.8%. Total claims, including repeat applications, fell to 168,543 (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees figures, reported 4 January 2026).

Border checks began in October 2023 under the previous government. Since May 2025, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has allowed police to turn back some asylum seekers at the border. Germany also restricted family reunion, ended fast-track citizenship and raised deportations by about 20% in 2025. Dobrindt said the "clear signal from Germany, that migration policy in Europe has changed, has reached the rest of the world".

The fairest reading is that policy mattered but was not the only cause. The fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria in December 2024 sharply cut Syrian claims, and tighter Italian policy reduced onward travel north.

The political pressure has not eased. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 43.8% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt on 6 September 2026 and about 38% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on 20 September. Other parties still refuse to govern with it.

Europe's turn is real. But numbers fell for more than one reason, and voters have not simply rewarded the governments that made the change.

What did the UK's grooming-gangs audit find?

The UK debate is driven by one scandal more than any other: organised child sexual exploitation by groups of men in towns such as Rotherham, Rochdale and Oldham. In January 2025 the government asked Baroness Louise Casey to audit the evidence. Her report was published on 16 June 2025.

Casey found that ethnicity was missing for two-thirds of suspects in police data, so national conclusions could not be drawn. But in the three police force areas with usable local data, she found "disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds" among suspects. She said there had been enough convictions of such groups across the country "to have warranted closer examination". She also found years of institutional failure, including girls treated as offenders rather than victims.

The government accepted all 12 recommendations. These include compulsory recording of suspects' ethnicity and nationality, and a law making any penetrative sex by an adult with a child under 16 rape. It also agreed to a national statutory inquiry. Baroness Anne Longfield was named chair on 9 December 2025. The inquiry has a £65 million budget, three years and full powers, and will "consider, explicitly, the background of offenders – including their ethnicity and religion".

The audit is about failures of policing and child protection, and about specific offenders. It does not support claims that British Muslims or British Pakistanis as a group are responsible.

How has the UK changed its asylum system?

In November 2025 Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced what the Home Office called the largest overhaul of asylum policy in modern times. Refugee protection will be reviewed every 30 months, not granted for five years. Refugees must wait 20 years to settle permanently unless they move onto a work visa. The government said openly that it was copying Denmark.

Small-boat crossings of the Channel were more than 40,000 in 2025, one of the highest years on record (approximate Home Office total). In 2026 they have fallen. By 16 June, 9,852 people had crossed, 40% fewer than at the same point in 2025. June to August had the fewest crossings in seven years. A "one in, one out" returns deal with France was ended after returning around 1,000 people. It did not reach the numbers the government wanted.

What did France's Muslim Brotherhood report say?

France has taken a different path. Its main focus is Islamist organisations, not asylum numbers. In May 2025, two senior civil servants gave President Macron a report on Muslim Brotherhood "entryism", meaning slow influence within local institutions. It named the Federation of Muslims of France as the Brotherhood's main vehicle. It said the federation controls 139 places of worship, is linked to 68 more, and runs 280 associations and 21 schools.

The report did not allege a plot of violence. It warned of a long-term threat to national cohesion through local "ecosystems". The federation called the claims "unfounded". The French Council of the Muslim Faith warned the report risked "fuelling fantasies and conspiracy theories".

The response is still moving through parliament. The Senate passed a Republican-led "Islamic entryism" bill on 5 May 2026. It widens the grounds for dissolving associations and lets prefects cut public funding to groups judged to breach "republican principles". Civil-society groups say it threatens freedom of association. Because it is a private senators' bill, it is unlikely to pass the National Assembly as it stands. The government is drafting its own law on separatism and entryism.

What about the Netherlands?

The Netherlands shows the politics can be messier than the slogans. Geert Wilders brought down the Dutch government in June 2025, saying partners would not back his 10-point asylum plan. In April 2026, the Senate rejected the harshest law after his party added a clause making it a crime to be in the country without papers. It did pass a two-status system. Refugees fleeing persecution get full rights. Those fleeing war get a more limited permit and no family reunion. First-time asylum claims fell 25% in 2025, to about 24,000, mainly because Syrian claims collapsed after Assad fell.

What has the United States done under Trump?

The US has moved furthest. Border Patrol arrests at the southwest border were 237,565 in the 2025 financial year, the lowest since 1970. In financial year 2022 they were 2.21 million. A travel ban signed on 4 June 2025 was widened on 16 December 2025. From 1 January 2026 it fully bars entry from 19 countries and partly restricts 20 more, citing weak screening and vetting.

On 13 January 2026, the US designated the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organisation. It listed the Egyptian and Jordanian branches as terrorists for supporting Hamas. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called these the "opening actions" of a wider effort. The Egyptian branch said it would challenge the decision in court.

Deportations are more disputed. The administration claimed more than 600,000 removals in 2025. The independent Migration Policy Institute estimated about 340,000 in the 2025 financial year, below the 685,000 recorded in Biden's last financial year. Far fewer people now cross the border, so fewer are removed there. Removals from inside the country now outnumber border deportations for the first time since 2014.

What is the critics' case?

A fair reader should weigh four objections.

• Some declines were not caused by policy. The fall of Assad cut Syrian claims everywhere at once. Officials in Germany and the Netherlands say so.
• Some measures may breach the law. The EU court found Denmark's housing law may be ethnic discrimination. France's entryism bill is opposed on freedom-of-association grounds.
• Crime has many causes. Sweden's fall in shootings came with a rise in bombings. Police credit their new powers.
• The politics did not settle anything. The governments that cracked down hardest in Sweden and Denmark lost ground or office, while the AfD kept rising.

How does Australia compare?

Australia is not starting from where Europe was. It has turned back boats under Operation Sovereign Borders since September 2013, and unauthorised maritime arrivals fell sharply within months. On boats, Australia settled the argument Europe is now having more than a decade ago. That is a bipartisan inheritance. Labor has kept the policy since 2022.

The overall intake is a different story. Net overseas migration peaked at 538,000 in 2022-23 and fell to 306,000 in 2024-25, the second year of decline (ABS, 19 December 2025). That fall is real, and the government deserves credit for it. But the ABS describes 306,000 only as the closest figure to pre-COVID levels since the peak, not a return to them. Almost two in three arrivals came on temporary visas, and international students were the largest single group. Asylum is a small part of the story. Its effects on housing and infrastructure are covered on separate pages.

On Islamist extremism, the turning point was Bondi. On 14 December 2025, a father and son attacked a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach and killed 15 people. Police called it a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State. The father, Sajid Akram, was an Indian national living in Australia on a resident visa and held a licence for six firearms. The son, Naveed Akram, was Australian-born. ASIO had looked into him in 2019 over links to an Islamic State cell and judged he was not an ongoing threat. He is before the courts on terrorism and murder charges.

Here is what Australia did next:

• New laws, fast. Parliament passed the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism laws on 20 January 2026. They allow the Home Affairs Minister to refuse or cancel visas for people linked to terrorist or hate groups or who publicly promote racial hatred, even without a conviction. They create an aggravated offence for religious or community leaders who advocate violence. They also set up a national gun buyback.
• A hate-group list. In early March 2026, Hizb ut-Tahrir became the first group listed as a prohibited hate group. Membership, recruiting and funding are now crimes. A neo-Nazi group was listed second.
• Visa cancellations. On 24 December 2025, the government cancelled the visa of a British man charged over Nazi symbols and calls for violence against Jews. Minister Tony Burke said: "If someone comes here for the purposes of hate, they can leave."
• A royal commission, after delay. The Prime Minister first resisted calls for a royal commission, then set one up on 9 January 2026 under former High Court justice Virginia Bell. Its interim report on 30 April 2026 made 14 recommendations. It found no gap in the existing legal framework that stopped agencies preventing the attack. Its final report is due by 14 December 2026.

Here is what Australia has not done. It has not published any official review of Muslim Brotherhood-linked networks like France's May 2025 report. It has not designated any Brotherhood branch, as the US did in January 2026. And unlike the UK and Denmark, it has not overhauled the terms of protection visas. That last gap matters less here, because boat arrivals were already stopped in 2013.

The verdict: what holds up?

Claim: Europe and the US have turned sharply against high asylum migration. Supported. Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and the US have all tightened rules since 2024, often under centre-left governments.

Claim: the crackdowns caused the fall in asylum numbers. Partly supported. Policy played a part, but Syria's change of regime cut claims across Europe in the same year.

Claim: tougher migration rules fixed Sweden's gang violence. Partly supported. Shootings are down 60% from 2022 and homicides are at a 13-year low. Bombings rose, and police credit new powers.

Claim: Australia has done nothing since Bondi. Not supported. It passed hate, visa and gun laws within five weeks and banned Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Claim: Australia has not matched the wider turn abroad. Partly supported. It has no Brotherhood review or designation, and its intake is still high. It has had the toughest boat policy in the West since 2013.

Claim: voters rewarded the crackdowns. Not supported. Sweden's government lost office and Denmark's ruling party had its worst result in a century.

For the domestic side of the migration debate, read the migration surge and the housing collision, migration beyond housing and international students and the rental frontline.