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As someone who has lived in both, I can say that both South Africa and Europe have illegal immigration problems, but these problems are not the same.

In each case there is the question of politics, economics, and culture. When taken together there is a case to be made that illegal immigration has had far more advantages for South Africa than the West.

Arguing that there is upside for South Africa is not to argue that illegal immigration is a good thing. It simply is not.

From the migrant’s perspective it is an understandable reaction to the desperate situations within their home countries and for that they should not be blamed. The state is at fault in both South Africa and Europe. The inability of South Africa, and the refusal of Europe, to manage the borders of their respective nations should not just be condemned, it should have prompted the mass resignation of the politicians responsible. Alas, it has not, much to the benefit of the organised criminal networks that control the global people-smuggling trade.

The modern system of illegal immigration facilitates an enormous, global, criminal enterprise. The smuggling of drugs, weapons, cash, and people has been supercharged by allowing gangs to run the global people-smuggling routes. The fact that there is not the capacity to investigate every person entering these states illegally provides further fuel to this criminal fire as it means that gangs, and in Europe's case sometimes terrorist cells, can smuggle members in and out as they please. It is shameful how much help open-border policies have given to criminals.

Finally, on why illegal immigration is not good, there is also legitimate concern among citizens that the massive import of low-skilled workers into an economy creates massively increased competition for the lower end of work. That is true. There is also the additional harm of the increasing supply of low-skilled workers also driving down wages in the sectors they compete in. There can be no defence of the system of illegal immigration.

However, one must also separate illegal immigration from the illegal immigrants and, once you have done so, it reveals the difference between Europe and South Africa.

Overlap

Politically, there is one area in which the European and South African experiences overlap. Illegal immigration has been used as a weapon by populist political parties in both places. While there are legitimate concerns around illegal immigration, populists can create an illusory world in which solving illegal immigration solves every other problem too. It does not.

South Africa would still have unemployment, crime, corruption, and state failure even if every illegal immigrant left tomorrow. Europe would still have weak growth, an aging population, broken welfare systems, and cultural uncertainty. But the populists are afforded this luxury by the abject failure of the mainstream political class to control immigration in the first place.

The first real divergence is economic.

Milton Friedman made the point best when he said, "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state." His broader point was that there is a difference between immigration into work and immigration into welfare. A system can survive the former. It cannot endlessly fund the latter.

That is where Europe and South Africa part ways. In Europe, illegal immigration collides with large welfare states. Even where migrants are not immediately treated as full citizens, the asylum system, housing support, healthcare obligations, and social benefit structures create an expensive holding pattern. People arrive, the state processes them slowly, many cannot work legally for long periods, and the taxpayer funds the gap.

That is not sustainable if the number of dependents keeps rising while the tax base remains stable or shrinks. Europe is aging. Its productive population is under pressure. Its welfare promises are already expensive. Adding large numbers of new arrivals who are difficult to employ, often low skilled, and dependent on public support worsens the fiscal arithmetic.

Not just theoretical

This concern is not merely theoretical. A widely cited Dutch study by the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis examined the long-term fiscal impact of different categories of immigrants and found stark differences. According to their estimates, highly educated immigrants from Western countries generated a net positive contribution of roughly €200 000 (about R4 million) over their lifetime, while low-skilled immigrants from non-Western countries imposed a net fiscal cost of around €275 000 (R5.5 million) per person.

Even second-generation outcomes did not fully close this gap. In a welfare-heavy system, large inflows of low-skilled migrants who struggle to find work can create a persistent and measurable burden on public finances.

South Africa has many failures, but this is not one of them. The South African state does not pay people simply to be in the country. Illegal immigrants to South Africa do not arrive in a generous welfare state. You may hear anecdotes about state clinics filled with Zimbabweans, Malawians, or Mozambicans, and there are real pressures on public services. But the core fact remains that South Africa does not offer the kind of welfare package that exists in much of Western Europe.

This changes the incentive structure completely. In South Africa, the illegal immigrant is generally forced by circumstance to become economically active as their very survival depends on it. In Europe, the system allows the recent arrival to become an economically inactive dependent of the state. A legitimate question then becomes: “Has Europe created a welfare system that incentivises lazy people to arrive to take advantage of it?” While this is probably not true of most immigrants, I am sure it is true of far too many.

Cultural

The second divergence is cultural, and this is the most important.

South Africa has never been culturally homogenous in the European sense. It is divided by language, race, tribe, history, and class. It has long been a country of multiple peoples living alongside one another. It is also, broadly speaking, a Christian country surrounded by other broadly Christian countries. Migrants from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo are not culturally identical to South Africans, but they are usually not civilisationally alien to the country they are entering.

This matters. Migrants from the region often understand South Africa. They know its languages or learn them quickly. They share many religious and social assumptions with their hosts. They come from countries where South Africa is seen, not as a decadent foreign civilisation, but as a place of opportunity. They are often grateful for the chance to work, trade, and build a better life. Many integrate into churches, neighbourhoods, schools, and businesses. They do not necessarily remain trapped forever in the lowest socio-economic tier. Hard work can move them upward.

Different problem

Europe faces a different problem. Its recent illegal immigration has often come from countries that are more culturally distant from the host nations. Many arrivals have come from the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Asia where Islamic views on secularism, women's rights, speech, religion, and social authority can differ sharply from Western European norms. That does not mean every migrant from those societies rejects Europe or wishes to undermine it.

Many are peaceful and hardworking. But it does mean that large-scale migration from culturally different regions creates a much harder integration challenge than migration between broadly similar societies.

That challenge has been made worse by Europe's refusal to insist on assimilation. Western Europe often invited or admitted large numbers of people while simultaneously losing confidence in its own civilisation. It did not clearly say that freedom of speech, equal rights for women, religious tolerance, secular law, and loyalty to the host nation were non-negotiable. Instead, it too often tried to manage difference through bureaucracy, benefits, and multicultural theory.

The result has been the creation of a differently cultured and often visibly separate underclass in parts of European society. You can see this in parts of Paris, Brussels, London, Stockholm, and other European cities. Migrants arrive. Their claims take time to process. They may not speak the language. They are housed by the state or supported by welfare. Over time, they become dependent on the very system that also keeps them at the bottom. Resentment then grows on both sides. Locals resent the cost and cultural change. Migrants resent feeling as though they are trapped at the bottom.

This is a destructive model. It locks newcomers into dependency while telling citizens that their concerns are bigotry. It then hands ammunition to the populists who claim that the entire political establishment has betrayed the nation.

South Africa's model is far from perfect, but it does not reproduce this same failure. Illegal immigrants in South Africa are not placed into a comfortable dependency pipeline. They are thrown into a harsh economy and forced to make themselves useful. It means migrants become traders, workers, tenants, church members, and entrepreneurs. They integrate because survival requires it.

More upside

That is why illegal immigration has had more upside in South Africa than in Europe. Not because illegal immigration is good. It is not. Not because South Africa has managed it well. It has not. But because the South African context filters migrants through work, cultural proximity, and practical integration, while the European context too often filters them through welfare, cultural separation, and bureaucratic paralysis.

In South Africa, the illegal immigrant often becomes a worker trying to survive in a broken country. In Europe, the illegal immigrant is too often turned into a dependent inside a civilisation that no longer knows how to defend its own terms of membership.

The illegal system should be condemned in both places. Borders should be enforced in both places. Criminal people-smuggling networks should be crushed in both places. But the consequences have not been the same.

In South Africa, illegal immigration has imposed political costs while adding labour, enterprise, and cultural compatibility. In Europe, it has imposed fiscal strain, social fragmentation, and a deeper crisis of national confidence.

That is why the same problem demands different judgments.