There’s talk about Macedonia accepting asylum seekers from the UK in exchange for money.
It’s being positioned as a way for the UK to handle failed asylum claims by sending people to Balkan countries instead.
I worry about what that means, especially for a place I already love.
I’ve been to Macedonia many times.
I love it for its culture, its people, and the way you meet Macedonians everywhere you go.
It’s real. It’s human. It feels like a nation with a people.
Contrast that with Malta (my home country and place I also love dearly) where you can walk around and barely see any Maltese at all because it’s so crowded with foreigners, tourists, and expats.
That’s not the culture fading, that’s normal life becoming unrecognisable.
Macedonia right now still feels grounded.
Still feels local. Still feels like a country defined by its own people.
Turning it into a destination where globalists Western Europe dumps rejected migrants would change the fabric of that society.
Macedonia doesn’t have a huge economy, a massive population, or iron‑clad borders.
They’re not a large welfare state with endless capacity.
They’re a country with real cultural identity, real communities, and real limitations.
If the solution to every Western border problem becomes “send them somewhere else and pay for it,” where does it end?
Once migration becomes normalised (and a commodity people trade) that way, geopolitical pressures shift.
Borders become meaningless (they already are in most of the EU).
Local culture gets diluted.
Social systems get strained.
It’s not just about Macedonia taking in migrants.
It’s about European nations being treated like widgets in someone else’s political calculus.
That’s not a sustainable solution.
It’s not a compassionate policy.
It’s a slave trade.
And as much as I love visiting Macedonia, I’d hate to see it become a footnote for someone else’s border crisis.