Last week, Republican Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy challenged other Republicans over the idea that ancestry and heritage make one a true American.
“The idea that ‘traditional Americans’ are more American than other Americans is inherently un-American,” Ramaswamy, who was born to Indian immigrant parents, told Turning Point USA’s annual conference.
Immigration – once a fringe far-right concept advocating the deportation of ethnic minorities – is now gaining traction in U.S. Republican circles as President Donald Trump enters the final weeks of his second term.
Earlier this year, there were reports that the US State Department was considering creating an immigration agency. Months later, the Department of Homeland Security posted online in support of immigrants.
But it’s not just American far-right figures who invoke the idea of immigration. European far-right leaders are also participating.
Here we take a closer look at the meaning of migration and its origins.
What is migration?
Generally speaking, remigration refers to the voluntary return of immigrants to their country of origin.
However, in the context of far-right movements, immigration is a means of ethnic cleansing.
For white ethnic nationalists, migration is the process by which all non-whites are forcibly removed from traditionally white countries.
What is the origin of immigration?
The idea of immigration dates back to Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. The Nazis attempted to “re-migrate” Jews from Germany to Madagascar.
However, the concept was popularized through the writings of French novelist Renaud Camus, who coined the Great Replacement conspiracy theory in his 2011 book Le Grand Replacement.
His widely debunked theory of white supremacy suggests that elites are replacing white Christians in the West with non-whites, primarily Muslims, through mass migration and demographic change. Camus calls this “genocide by substitution.”
Far-right nationalists in Europe and elsewhere have borrowed ideas from this theory.
Heidi Beirich, an expert on far-right movements in the United States and Europe, told Al Jazeera that the term immigrant is “relatively new” in far-right circles.
Beirich said the concept was popularized by Martin Sellner.
Sellner, 36, is the leader of Austria’s ultra-nationalist Identity Movement, a far-right group known for its anti-immigration activities and promotion of ethno-nationalist ideology. Ethno-nationalists define nations primarily by their common ethnicity, ancestry, culture, and tradition.
“Immigration advocates the forcible removal of non-white people from what Mr. Sellner and others believe is historically a white nation, essentially Europe, Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand,” Beirich explained.
Immigration, Beirich said, is essentially “a policy solution to the white supremacist ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory.”
Do different groups have different ways of thinking?
There are also nationalist groups that go beyond ethnic nationalism.
Civic nationalists, also known as liberal nationalists or constitutional nationalists, define the nation by common political values, laws, and institutions, regardless of ethnicity. They believe that a person belongs to a country if he has legal citizenship and is faithful to the country’s principles.
Civic nationalists are less enthusiastic about migration than ethnic nationalists, but for them migration means voluntary return migration. This can mean policies and incentives for immigrants to return to their country of origin if they wish, often for economic, family or cultural reasons.
Why is the idea of immigration becoming mainstream?
Beirich said Sellner has been pushing this idea to far-right parties in Europe for the past two years.
“What is surprising is not that xenophobic parties like Germany’s AfD would embrace this, but rather that white supremacist policy positions are now being promoted by the US government.”
The AfD is a far-right party called Alternative for Germany and is classified as an “extremist” organization in the country.
In May 2025, Axios reported, citing unnamed State Department officials, that the State Department was planning to create an “Immigration Bureau.”
Then, in an Oct. 14 X post, the Department of Homeland Security wrote “Relocation” and added a link to a mobile application that allows U.S. immigrants to voluntarily deport.
Where is the migration movement gaining momentum?
The idea of immigration has also been revived in Europe by far-right leaders.
This includes Herbert Kickle, leader of Austria’s far-right anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO).
“As People’s Prime Minister, I will begin relocating all those who trample on our right to hospitality,” Kickle said in his FPO manifesto ahead of the September 2024 elections.
Although the FPO won the majority of seats in the elections, other parties, the conservative People’s Party (OVP), the Social Democratic Party (SPO), and the liberal NEOS, came together to form a ruling coalition based on an agreement in early 2025 that would not support the FPO.
Across the border in Germany, AfD leader Alice Weidel spoke of “re-migration” at a party conference in January while supporting closing borders to new immigrants.
In May 2025, a conference called the Migration Summit was held in Italy. Far-right activists from across Europe participated. European migration website InfoMigrants estimated that 400 right-wing activists attended the summit.
But Beirich said that if immigration were implemented as a policy, it would effectively amount to “an attempt to create an all-white country through ethnic cleansing.”
