In a world where one’s digital blueprint has already become a determining factor for the achievement of various socio-economic rights such as employment, education, and other personal milestones, the prospect of automating this screening and extending it to migration and border control could reshape the globe’s demographics in profound ways. Indeed, an increasingly debated topic regarding AI regulation is its usage for border control screening, which intersects with migrants’ and refugees’ rights.

The  EU’s AI Act 2024, which will enter into force in August 2026, has classified the use of AI profiling for border control as high risk and, as such, worthy of high regulation. Indeed, AI has been used to screen asylum and visa applications, ensure an individual is who they claim to be through biometric identification systems, and estimate illegal migration risks. Amongst these regulations is the responsibility of providers to conduct data governance, record-keeping, and the implementation of human oversight. Criminal risk profiling based solely on personality traits inferred from an individual’s data and social scoring, on the other hand, lies amongst the prohibited usages of AI listed in the Act (Chapter II, Article 5).

In addition to this, a lesser talked about risk is the use of already controversial DNA analysis for profiling. Genetic testing providers such as Ancestry.com and CircleDNA both claim to be able to assess one’s innate propensity to risk-taking, for example, based on one’s DNA (although both tests can give different results for the same person). Risk-taking is thought of as one of the main personality traits that AI could possibly be used to assess when profiling applicants  to determine their chance of irregular migration and other criminal offenses. With 23andme.com recently filing for bankruptcy after an important data breach, debates about the intersection of DNA testing, data privacy, migration, and AI are more urgent than ever, as, if not prohibited, DNA data analysed by AI could be used in some regions to facilitate migration profiling based on personality profiling. For now, however, the new practice of DNA profiling at the border in the EU, ECOWAS, and other regions, focuses on citizen identification and aims to address the missing persons and human trafficking crisis.

In contrast to this push to put some checks and balances in European border control tech, the Trump administration saw a push towards stricter immigration law enforcement, while inversely advocating for a more liberal AI use in governmental affairs and beyond. The country had indeed already passed various legislations, which vary by states, to facilitate AI profiling to prevent criminal activities whilst accounting for data privacy. In the context of the Trump administration’s migration crackdown, which has been criticised for its lack of due process, AI has been used to profile migrants based on their political inclinations, which arguably contravene several individual liberties listed in the ICCPR and beyond.

All of this could also lead to important demographic changes in the future as even just the looming prospect of a more dystopian version of the US might attract different kinds of immigrants, ideologically speaking and demographically speaking, and retain different kinds of citizens, again based on ideology and demographics. The sociological consequences of such policies on how feasible and attractive various migration destinations are could lead ethnic and sexual minorities, as well as refugees and economic migrants, to gravitate towards destinations with stronger anti-profiling interdictions, such as the EU, which could risk exacerbating the far-right migration pushback in the EU context and their Great Replacement arguments. More likely, developing and emerging destinations in the Global South (specifically the BRICS, South-East Asia, and the GCC) could also gain traction as the transition towards a multipolar global order cements.