Trump: Europe is ‘losing its culture’ because of immigration

President Trump is railing against what he described as the migration of “millions and millions of people” into Europe, declaring that the continent is “losing its culture” to refugees and asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa.

In an interview with the British tabloid The Sun published Thursday, Trump said it is a “shame” that European leaders had allowed so many migrants to enter their countries. 

“Allowing the immigration to take place in Europe is a shame,” the U.S. president told the tabloid, which his owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

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“I think it changed the fabric of Europe and, unless you act very quickly, it’s never going to be what it was, and I don’t mean that in a positive way,” he continued. 

Trump’s publicized comments came shortly after he arrived in the U.K. for a long-awaited trip on the heels of a tense set of meetings at the annual NATO summit in Brussels, where he delivered a blistering criticism of European allies and demanded that member nations pay more for defense.

The president’s comments during his interview with The Sun, however, highlighted Trump’s deeply held skepticism of immigration and resurfaced a line of attack that he had used often on the campaign trail — that Europe was being overrun by non-Europeans and was quickly becoming a shell of what it once was.

“I think you are losing your culture,” he told the tabloid. “Look around. You go through certain areas that didn’t exist ten or 15 years ago.”

In fact, migration levels to Europe have declined recently, dropping to numbers more common prior to 2015, when an influx of people sought to seek asylum on the continent to escape conflict and humanitarian crises in the Middle East and Africa. 

Back in the U.S., Trump has led a crackdown on illegal immigration, warning that a failure to secure America’s southern border would result in criminals and drugs entering the U.S.

That crackdown, however, has become the subject of controversy for the Trump administration, after it was revealed that thousands of migrant children had been separated from their parents at the border as part of enforcement efforts.