# Anti-Immigration Sentiment ## What this driver is Anti-immigration sentiment is a continuing meter of public hostility, threat framing, and political demand to exclude or punish migrants and refugees. It is not the NEW Mediterranean event bundle and not [Migration Pressure](/drivers/migration-pressure) (volume). Those neighbouring nodes can move with this meter. They do not replace it. The driver is not [Migration Policy Restrictiveness](/drivers/mig-policy-restrictiveness) (statutes and procedures) and not [Forced Displacement Scale](/drivers/forced-displacement-scale). A harder law can follow sentiment; it is not the same node. It is not Ukraine war. Live people whose campaigns sit on this chain — [Giorgia Meloni](/people/mig-giorgia-meloni), [Viktor Orbán](/people/mig-actor-viktor-orban), [Geert Wilders](/people/geert-wilders) — are referenced on the Mediterranean bundle and on their person pages. They are not reminted here. It applies globally as a time-varying intensity. That is a disclosed, weak lens, not a complete operational definition of hostility. Missing releases stay missing. This page does not interpolate. Net migration is not a poll. The documentary neighbourhood includes Eurobarometer immigration items, national election programmes, and the 2024 Pact debate. Those instruments can attach as facts. They do not become a unique Factrail sentiment coefficient. ## Mechanism Sentiment moves welfare through named channels. First, threat framing. Media and campaigns treat arrivals as invasion, crime, or cultural replacement. A speech is not a unique poll point. Second, coalition demand. Parties convert framing into votes and coalition vetoes on relocation, rescue, and family reunion. Orbán’s Hungary, Meloni’s Italy, and Wilders’s Netherlands are live examples on neighbouring files. Third, policy transmission. Sentiment raises restrictiveness and can license pushbacks. Restrictiveness remains a different meter. Fourth, the proxy’s limits. SM.POP.NETM world-net is not hostility. Treating that as “sentiment” is a weak proxy. A later Eurobarometer series would be better. Timing is weeks for a campaign and years for a WDI point. A later dedicated survey series would update the meter. It would not twin the Mediterranean bundle. ## Evidence base The live quantitative record is Net migration (SM.POP.NETM) (https://api.worldbank.org/v2/country/all/indicator/SM.POP.NETM?date=2020:2025&format=json&per_page=20000). Those figures are the live lineage, not a new invented coefficient. Context sits at Eurobarometer and at the Council Pact pages on the neighbouring restrictiveness and Mediterranean files. This page does not invent a unique poll percentage, hate-crime integer, or Contribution.size. Where a survey prints a share, that share stays on the survey. Evidence is strongest for named campaign instruments and for the disclosed proxy lineage. It is weaker for the claim that SM.POP.NETM is sentiment. It is weakest where an “invasion” adjective is asked to replace a poll. ## Effect on welfare indicators This driver, when it actually runs, is a first-order channel into civic voice for people on the move and for minorities in receiving states. - [Having a say in government](/indicators/government-welfare-083-having-a-say-in-government): direction lower protection-voice when hostility licenses exclusionary law and street intimidation. Horizon: months to an electoral cycle. Confidence: medium. The indicator is higher-is-better. Strengthening anti-immigration sentiment is welfare-negative on that series. No unique poll integer is invented here. Missing coefficients stay missing. Do not hang this file on [territorial-revisionism](/drivers/territorial-revisionism). The welfare sign of strengthening this meter is negative for civic equality. That is the opposite of treating a campaign slogan as a public good that rebates a drowning. ## Interactions and contested points Reinforcement is obvious. Offsetting is the claim that “sentiment” is just democratic preference. Preference can be stored. It does not cancel documented hostility and exclusionary instruments. The strongest competing view is that SM.POP.NETM cannot carry this driver. That objection is serious. The competing defence is the existing disclosed proxy plus an honest description of its weakness. A second competing view is that this node should be merged into mediterranean-migration or restrictiveness. It should not. Sentiment is demand. Restrictiveness is law. The Mediterranean file is a route-and-deterrence event bundle. Not established: a unique Factrail poll coefficient. A later Eurobarometer series would update the meter. ## Dated facts - Alternative for Germany substantially increases its vote in the 2025 federal election. https://factrail.ai/facts/afd-gains-in-german-federal-election-2025. - 2024: Germany extends temporary controls across all land borders. https://factrail.ai/facts/germany-expands-land-border-controls-2024. - 2024: National Rally records major gains in France's European Parliament election. https://factrail.ai/facts/national-rally-european-election-gains-france-2024. - EU adopts the New Pact on Migration and Asylum (2024). https://factrail.ai/facts/mig-fact-eu-pact-migration-asylum-2024. - 2023: United Kingdom enacts the Illegal Migration Act. https://factrail.ai/facts/uk-illegal-migration-act-2023. - 2023: Fishing vessel carrying migrants sinks near Pylos, Greece. https://factrail.ai/facts/pylos-migrant-shipwreck-2023. - 2022: Poland completes a major barrier on its border with Belarus. https://factrail.ai/facts/poland-belarus-border-barrier-completed-2022. - 2020: Fire destroys much of the Moria refugee camp on Lesbos. https://factrail.ai/facts/moria-refugee-camp-fire-2020. - 2018: The Justice Department implements zero-tolerance prosecution of illegal entry, producing family separations. https://factrail.ai/facts/us-fact-zero-tolerance-family-separation-2018. Sources: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-children-idUSKBN1J92E9/, https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1049751/download. - 2017: Trump issues Executive Order 13769 restricting entry from seven Muslim-majority countries. https://factrail.ai/facts/us-fact-eo-13769-travel-ban-2017. Sources: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-immigration-idUSKBN15B0S4/, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/02/01/2017-02281/protecting-the-nation-from-foreign-terrorist-entry-into-the-united-states. - The EU and Turkey agree the 18 March 2016 statement on migration. https://factrail.ai/facts/tr-eu-turkey-statement-2016. Sources: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-eu-turkey-idUSKCN0WK0T0, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/03/18/eu-turkey-statement/. - 2015: Hungary completes a border fence along its frontier with Serbia. https://factrail.ai/facts/hungary-builds-serbia-border-fence-2015. ## Methodology https://factrail.ai/methodology Canonical: https://factrail.ai/drivers/anti-immigration-sentiment