Vox and Japan's LDP: anti-immigration vote under scrutiny

Vox and the Japanese mirror: the vote that doesn't close the door

In Tokyo, governments have spent the last ten to fifteen years promising to curb immigration and, according to the story circulating in the debate, the Nigerian presence in the capital has kept growing. That is the mirror held up to anyone who thinks dropping a ballot in the box on 29 November will change anything. The core argument is uncomfortable: Europe's institutional right — the AfD in Germany, Le Pen in France, Vox in Spain — is part of the system that manages the phenomenon, not the scalpel that removes it.

The thread's thesis is not that immigration is irrelevant. It is that the instrument meant to solve it is rigged. The system brings them in and you ask the system to take them out, sums up the opening argument. And it adds the twist that stings most: street cameras and surveillance are not deployed against those at the top, but over those at the bottom. The wolf guarding the sheep, in the words of the opening post.

The Japanese "spoiler" argument and the Italy comparison

Japan's LDP case works as a warning. A party that came in promising to solve the migration problem and that, years later, maintains the same gap between rhetoric and results: hurdles for those who want to study or reside legally, a free hand for the shadow economy that needs cheap labour. The comparison extends to Italy, where it is pointed out that the right's time in government has not changed the underlying equation.

The most repeated reading is that the European right is held hostage by the system's logic. It governs, legislates, makes a fuss about sea arrivals and then stays silent about the flows coming in by plane. Some go further and argue that Vox is not an anti-immigration party, but a party with a specific profile of rejection, and that the only genuinely disruptive project in Catalonia is Aliança Catalana. These are currents of analysis, not dogmas: on the other side weighs the argument that without governing, no one can know whether a programme would be delivered.

Pension-payer politics and robotisation: who is really surplus

The debate shifts to the economy when demographics come into play. The accusation of "pension-payer politics" points to migration flows sustaining the pay-as-you-go system: without new contributors, the numbers don't add up. Hence the pessimistic conclusion: no right-wing government will turn off the tap, because the tap pays the pensions of the voters who actually turn up at the polls.

The corollary is colder. With automation, robotisation and AI, it is us the system no longer needs, not the incoming labour. It is the piece almost nobody disputes and which explains why the anti-immigration discourse stays on the surface: it attacks the visible symptom, not the mechanism producing it. Mass immigration works as a patch for the birth-rate crisis, and a patch isn't removed while the puncture remains.

29 November and the tactical vote that never comes

The election frames the final part of the conversation. Some see it as a chance to punish the Government and curb what they call sanchismo (the political current of Spain's PM Pedro Sánchez). Others respond with parliamentary arithmetic: naturalised citizens and their descendants already number in the millions and they vote, and revoking nationalities would require amending the Constitution. Seats don't move by decree.

Then the option of a blank or spoiled ballot appears as a middle ground, and abstention as a gesture of coherence. The most acid reply comes from the other side: don't vote, the ghost grandchildren will do it for you. The reproach of apathy has its own logic — those who don't take part leave the field clear — but it clashes with the evidence that taking part hasn't changed much in forty years either.

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The unsettling figure remains. In a country where curbing irregular arrivals was promised, the official count of foreigners falls short of what is seen on the street, and the debate over exactly how many there are still has no verifiable answer. Meanwhile, the calendar moves towards an election where, according to the prevailing scepticism, the same old thing will happen again: the system screwing its voters over for the umpteenth time.