EU Agrees to Speed Up Returns for Unlawful Migrants

The policy is debated in terms of structure, funding, and institutional design. What is not debated - and what will determine the policy’s success or failure - is the character of the people who will implement it. We are told that the EU Parliament and the EU Council have reached a provisional agreement to simplify and speed up the return of migrants staying unlawfully. The headlines speak of efficiency, of streamlined procedures, of borders secured by bureaucratic agility. But I look past the machinery of the state to the moral formation of the citizens and officials who must inhabit this new reality. A law is only as good as the conscience of the man who enforces it, and a system is only as stable as the virtue of the people who sustain it.

Consider the nature of this “provisional deal.” It is an agreement between institutions, yet it concerns human beings. The stakeholders are described in dry administrative terms: member states dealing with migration flows, migrants facing faster returns. The language strips away the individual to make the problem manageable. This is the first test of character. Does the citizenry view the stranger as a person with a history, or merely as a statistic to be processed? If our moral education has failed to cultivate a sense of common humanity, then no amount of procedural simplification will yield justice. It will yield only efficiency in exclusion. The effectiveness of the system is already questioned, not merely on legal grounds, but on the ground of fairness. Fairness is not a legal concept alone; it is a habit of the heart. It is the disposition to treat the other with dignity even when the law permits harshness.

What kind of formation produced the current climate? We have invested heavily in the education of the mind, but we have neglected the training of the affections. The people who draft these agreements in Brussels, and the border agents who execute them, are products of a system that prizes speed over reflection, and compliance over compassion. When we rush to “speed up” returns, we signal that our primary virtue is decisiveness, not deliberation. We signal that our character is impatient. Is this the character we wish to see in our public servants? Or do we wish for them to possess the patience to weigh the particular circumstances of each case, to recognize that “unlawful” does not always mean “unworthy of mercy”?

The practical test of this new arrangement is simple. Will it produce better people? Or will it merely produce more efficient administrators? If the goal is to create a society where the rule of law is respected because it is just, then we must ask whether this policy reinforces or erodes that justice. A system that relies on the rapid removal of those who have broken the law may appear strong on paper. But strength of character is not found in the speed of expulsion, but in the integrity of reception. If we treat the poor and the displaced with contempt, we corrupt our own souls in the process. The moral formation of a nation is revealed in how it treats those it has no immediate use for.

I have spent my life building schools for the poor, not because I believe education is a panacea, but because I believe that character is formed by habit, and habit is formed by environment. If the environment of our borders is one of hostility and haste, the character of our citizens will become hostile and hasty. We cannot expect our people to be charitable if our institutions are cruel. We cannot expect our officials to be humane if our laws are designed to be impersonal. The provisional agreement assumes that the problem is one of logistics. I submit that the problem is one of virtue.

The fruits of this system will be seen not in the number of returns, but in the quality of our public life. Will this policy foster a sense of shared responsibility, or will it deepen the divide between the “deserving” and the “undeserving”? Will it teach our children that the law is a shield for the vulnerable, or a sword for the powerful? The EU Parliament and Council may have simplified the process, but they have not simplified the moral complexity of human movement. They have merely shifted the burden from the institution to the individual conscience of the enforcer. And if that conscience is not formed by a serious, Christian, and practical ethic of care, the result will be a cold, mechanical brutality that claims the name of order but delivers only oppression.

We must look at the formation of the people involved. Are they being trained to see the image of God in the migrant, or merely a breach in the perimeter? The answer to that question will determine whether this policy is a triumph of governance or a failure of character. Until we address the moral education of our citizens, our borders will remain porous to corruption, whether it is the corruption of smugglers or the corruption of our own indifference. The unglamorous work of forming decent people is the only foundation upon which a stable and just society can be built. Everything else is merely arrangement.