Brexit campaign leader Nigel Farage has backed U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to win funding for a southern border wall, highlighting the bitter experience of open borders in Europe during the migrant crisis.

The U.S. government is currently experiencing a shutdown as Congress refuses to release funding for a physical barrier, with President Trump using a televised address to make the case for serious border security so American citizens are no longer “horribly victimised” by the drug-traffickers, cartel members, and convicted killers who are taking advantage of the porous frontier with Mexico.

“The primary duty of any government is to look after the integrity of the nation an to protect its own citizens,” Farage agreed in a Fox News interview.

“In Europe, we kind of surrendered that principle… we had an area of complete Free Movement without anybody being checked, and we also allowed anybody that came in across the Mediterranean and set foot on European soil to claim they were a refugee,” he recalled.

“The reality, of course, is that hardly any of them would have qualified as refugees; it was people seeking their own economic advantage — and mixed in with it there was too many people who’ve gone on to commit crimes and even terrorist acts,” he stated bluntly.

Europol: 'Indisputable' That Terrorists Entered Europe Posing as Refugees https://t.co/6EBlAh86ye pic.twitter.com/dxGLkaNSrk — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) December 3, 2016

The former UKIP supremo told the broadcaster that he believed the President had looked across the Atlantic and “seen the social change in Germany, in Sweden, the rising crime, the growing anger of the European electorates that their governments are not putting their own interests first” and concluded “we’re going to learn from Europe, even if the Democrats have got their head in the sand.”

Mr Farage suggested the debate around border security had been debased by the application of the word “refugee” to anyone attempting a difficult journey to another country — as is currently happening in the United Kingdom, for example, where hundreds of migrants travelling from France to the United Kingdom by sea in small boats are typically characterised as “desperate” refugees.

Passage through the world’s busiest shipping lane in small boats is certainly perilous, but the migrants are not, as Farage put it, “people in fear of their lives because of their race, their religion, or their political [beliefs]” but opportunists attempting to migrate from one advanced, first world economy to another — and therefore not true refugees.

Hungary builds a wall; cuts illegal immigration by over 99 per cent. Lessons for President Trump…? https://t.co/ME09N3n3eg — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 16, 2017

“Gosh, I wish across Europe we’d done this a few years ago,” the British MEP concluded, warning American viewers: “Please do not make the same mistakes that we’ve made.”

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery