Germany: Figures reveal most migrants have no will to integrate
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Library of Professor Richard A. Macksey in Baltimore
Showing posts with label Colonization of Europe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Colonization of Europe. Show all posts
Sunday, June 21, 2020
Germany: Figures reveal most migrants have no will to integrate
From these figures it’s entirely clear that the vast numbers of foreigners who’ve come to Europe and Germany in the past few years have not helped to enrich the society, have not created wealth, and have not helped to boost the economy. In fact, they’ve done quite the opposite.
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
On Migrant Deaths
On Migrant Deaths
“I observe that men run away to other countries, because they are not good in their own.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Culture, 1876.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Culture, 1876.
“Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!”
B. Yeats, Under Ben Bulben
B. Yeats, Under Ben Bulben
The sight and smell must have been horrific. On October 23, the bodies of 39 East Asians were found in an airtight refrigerated truck container in Essex in eastern England. Bloody handprints smeared the walls, and the bodies, mostly naked, foamed at the mouth. A murder investigation was immediately launched, but the circumstances, despite their horrific nature, were hardly mysterious. The movements of the haulage truck, the racial uniformity of the dead, and the conditions of transport all pointed to a catastrophic attempt at organized illegal entry into Britain. The driver was arrested and charged. Arrest warrants were issued. Documentation was seized and examined. Autopsies and collaboration with foreign police forces revealed that the deceased were Vietnamese, and that their final journey to Britain occurred via Belgium and Ireland. It is, as yet, undetermined at which geographic point the process of suffocation began, though it is believed they were alive in the container for around ten hours before they succumbed, one by one.
It is a story that, in all its macabre and gory features, lends itself to exploitation — and the Left has exploited it to the full. The narrative has emerged that the corpses in Essex were the result of Third World “desperation” and a heartless immigration system that fails to provide “safe routes” for migrants. But is this really what’s happening, both in Britain and across the West? Is this really the explanation for drownings in the Mediterranean, bodies on Turkish beaches, and deaths in the Arizona desert? Much as I empathize with the particularly nasty deaths of the deceased Vietnamese, I argue that they were the victims of their own materialistic and often criminal desire to live in “First World” conditions among Whites, of a sociopathic Irish people-smuggling gang that cared not for their illegal cargo or Europe, but for filthy profit alone, and of a much broader and more profound phenomena — the deepening exploitation of Europe and Europeans under manipulative humanitarian pretexts.
“The Migrant Personality”
A common theme in mass media treatments of migrant deaths is the emphasis on a putative “desperation” among migrants.
The term implies a lack of choice, and implicitly suggests that migrants don’t really want to move to the West, but have been forced to do so by circumstances.
These narrative strains, undoubtedly cultivated to provoke sympathy and reduce opposition among European natives, are in stark contrast to the reality that Third World migrants to the West invariably pass through many safe and reasonably prosperous countries prior to their arrival.
This reality suggests that choice is actually a very strong feature of migrant behavior, and reduces the likelihood that such behavior is motivated by genuine desperation.
Perhaps because of the obvious weakness of “desperation” narratives, much energy has been expended on the development of propaganda on the putative migrant personality, especially aspects concerning ambitions and motivations. For example, an extensive literature has developed in both popular culture and academia suggesting that migration selects for educational qualifications, motivational characteristics, and positive risk-taking behaviors.
In line with this thinking, government, mass media and academia in the West have invested heavily in persuading native populations that mass migration from areas as distant as Africa and South Asia is a net gain for receiving countries, since it involves importing highly-motivated and capable people.
The problem with arguments such as these is that they are based heavily in nostalgic visions of the (predominantly American) past, and aren’t remotely based in the contemporary global social reality.
Ideas of energetic pioneers arriving from abroad are clearly more applicable to the pushing of a nineteenth-century frontier populated by Northwest Europeans than they are to mass migration to fully-established twenty-first century nations with advanced economies and generous welfare provisions.
In 2018, a team of scholars from The Migration Observatory, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, at the UK’s University of Oxford, published their findings on “arguments about a common migrant personality.”[1]
The study was one of the first of its kind since the serious analysis of the putative migrant personality has been rare indeed.
Rather controversially, the Oxford team’s findings “seem to contradict the arguments about a common migrant personality put forward by social psychologists, as well as most of the predictions of standard economic models. We do find, however, some support for the welfare magnet hypothesis.” [emphasis added]
The “welfare magnet hypothesis” is, in the polite expression of the Oxford scholars, essentially the argument that “very generous welfare states can lead to negative skill selectivity.”
If one wanted to be less polite, the welfare magnet hypothesis could be usefully explained as the attraction exerted by an abundance of free resources on large numbers of unskilled migrants with poor cultural and behavioral aptitudes, who are thus destined to become net drains on their target nation.
In fact, the study found Turks migrating to wealthy European countries to be negatively selected for motivation and aptitude, meaning that only the less capable and talented among the Turks left for Europe.
******
Despite findings like these, contemporary mass migration is almost
exclusively presented to Western populations as a humanitarian matter,
and most media treatments of the issue are replete with appeals to
emotion and concepts of fairness. It is rarely, if ever, admitted that mass migration is often deliberately pursued by “exporting” nations as a means of relieving the burden of criminal elements and surplus populations, and also a means of generating revenue from money remitted by established migrants.
And it is rarely admitted that left in Western societies sees these immigrants as clients and a future voting base, the latter already having profound effects in the United States.
While there has been much talk about Syria as a zone of war and destruction, little has been made of the fact that, like the Russian Jews in 1880 (whose own migration path was eased by largely fictional humanitarian tales of woe), it has one of the highest population growth rates in the world (2.4%). In the seven least-developed of Syria’s 14 provinces, women have between 3.8 and 6.2 children, and their fertility rates are not expected to decline much in the next 15 years.
In 2010, Nabil Sukkar, a Syrian economist formerly with the World Bank, said “We have a population problem, no question. Unless we cope with it, it could be a burden on our development.” Sukkar said labor supply was growing about 4.5 percent a year, due to rapid population expansion in earlier decades, outpacing the capacity of Syria’s economy to create jobs for the cohort of 250,000 young people arriving on the job market every year.
“Too big a population means a high burden on government services, such as education, electricity and health care,” he said. “Perhaps in 20 years the growth rate will go down to 1.5 percent as in Egypt, but in the meantime we do have a problem.”
Since Syria spent the period 2011–2019 exporting its entire surplus cohort under the cover of a perfectly-timed civil war, Sukkar’s problem, like the similar one facing Africa, is now Europe’s problem.
“The Migrant Contribution”
The same pattern is witnessed across the varying ethnic hues of mass migration, even taking into account the dead Vietnamese in Essex.
In a study of Vietnamese illegal immigration to the UK and Germany, academic Trang Nguyen found that “immigration agencies and brokers that are affiliated to the Vietnamese government” have been providing logistical support to illegal Vietnamese in Europe because “illegal immigration to Europe is widely recognized by Hanoi as a welcome solution to their unemployment problem and as a source of growing remittances.”
Remittances from what? The Vietnamese have rather quickly established themselves in Europe as the dominant players in the sale of illegal cigarettes (Germany) and the mass cultivation of cannabis in indoor plantations (UK). In 2012, more than 60% of UK arrests for cannabis production involved Vietnamese migrants. The title of Nguyen’s article, and his central thesis, is that this is “government-sponsored crime” in the sense that Hanoi is providing logistical support for the activities of its illegals plying these illicit trades on European soil. Nguyen continues:
They developed methods to turn networks of large houses into clandestine cannabis plantation farms (Luke, 2012). Information from Vietnamese-language online fora in the UK indicates that these houses are rented from housing agents using fraudulent or stolen identity papers. Set-up costs for an operation vary between £15,000 and £50,000 while annual profits from a single ‘grow house’ run from £200,000 to £500,000. According to interviewees and other media reports, Vietnamese-run cannabis farms are mainly located in the suburbs of London, Manchester and Birmingham.The background of Vietnamese migrants is almost uniform. Nguyen remarks that they overwhelmingly tend to have a rural origin and low educational attainment, and have few ambitions other than finding illegal work in cigarette and cannabis manufacture (males) or in nail bars (females).
Despite quasi-Romantic narratives proffered by the Left-Liberal media, these individuals do not come to Europe with visions of cultural synthesis and embracing European “values.” Rather, Europe is seen as a lucrative cash cow, to be milked for welfare or criminal proceeds. Nguyen relates how one illegal told him that “Many of them (cannabis “gardeners”) went to the UK and made a fortune, but came back not knowing a single English word. They probably did not even see the Big Ben tower.”
A significant proportion of these illegal proceeds are funnelled back to Vietnam through a network of “legitimate” Vietnamese businesses operating in Europe, such as grocery stores, logistics companies, or translation agencies, who receive foreign currencies from undocumented migrants and launder it for them.
In 2017, the Ministry of Labour of Vietnam set the target of exporting 225,000 migrant workers over a 24-month period.
The policy has resulted in Vietnam now being one of the top ten global remittance recipients, receiving between $10 and $14 billion since 2012, accounting for 6–8% of its GDP.
Rather than warning prospective migrants about the potentiality of their becoming engaged with criminal elements, Nguyen found the Vietnamese government complicit in assisting “criminal networks to lure and traffic individuals and encourage the undocumented migrants to enter illegal markets.” In fact, many of the same networks are actually “state-owned or stated-affiliated.” At time of this writing, Hanoi has never reported “any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of officials complicit in human trafficking offences,” and the Vietnamese government has made it extremely difficult for European nations to deport Vietnamese illegals back to their country of origin.
The scale and calculation behind international migration networks, and the complicity of population-exporting governments, surely exposes, or at the very least problematizes, the myth of a humanitarian crisis.
In the case of the Essex incident, unfortunately, a willful ignorance has prevailed across the UK media and important sections of society.
A good example is an awful piece of journalism that appeared in The Scotsman. The article begins, predictably, with humanitarian and emotional appeals: “Who could ever forget the heartbreaking picture of a toddler lying dead on a Mediterranean shore, or the impact it had on public consciousness? … What happened in Essex this week is simply one small incident in a massive international problem.”
What problem? The journalist, Christine Jardine, can’t seem to articulate it, but then she also can’t articulate who the dead people actually were, identifying them instead as originating in “the poor, coastal, province of Fujian, in south-east China.” She continues:
But all victims of incidents whether here, on the continent or on Mediterranean have at least one thing in common. Desperation. Nobody risks their lives clinging to an inflatable raft crossing dangerous sea routes unless they feel that is the only option they have. None of us would put our children at risk, or gamble on surviving thousands of miles in the back of a refrigerated truck if we were looking for an easy life. It is too easy to blame the victims rather than look for solutions.All the common features of the Left-Liberal narrative are here — desperation; lack of options; not looking for an easy life but a place to pursue their ambitions.
But we know that these migrants risked their lives to make a “fortune” in illegal trades, that they have absolutely no affinity with the nation or people they hope to make their criminal proceeds among, and that their government cynically assists them in their efforts. These are unintelligent and otherwise unmotivated people who chose to be criminals in foreign lands, when they could have chosen to remain in their home nations.
Jardine adds:
If we are ever to make progress, ever to prevent these deaths, we need to be looking at ways of providing safety for those whose lives have become intolerable because of war or persecution. We need to look at ways of providing safe passage and work with international agencies, both those who deal with aid and those who tackle crime. Tracking down the traffickers at source and tackling them before the damage is done is vital. We also have to consider that perhaps many of those who fall prey to the traffickers would not do so if they felt there was a realistic hope of a safe legal means of immigration. Looking at our own immigration system to ensure that what we provide is fair, compassionate and effective for those who want to come here is essential. But so is providing international aid to those countries where the desperation for a better life is most keenly felt.I wonder what international agencies Jardine would propose we work with, in order to relax our borders and prevent this happening again. Perhaps the government in Hanoi? Yes, they’d be very receptive to our decision to open our borders, which could be very lucrative for them indeed.
Sarcasm aside, consider the infantile level of a mind that suggests the only ways we can prevent illegal migrants from dying while attempting to enter our nations are to either grant them unqualified access or to throw money at their home governments. What should we give to Hanoi? $10 billion? $12 billion? Do we offer to make up 10% of their GDP, to beat the 8% they already derive from us in cannabis farms and illegal cigarette sales, in the hope they will stop operating criminal migrant networks in Europe? Do we add this to the €6 billion we have now pledged to Turkey in the hope they won’t flood us with more migrants? How many nations do we agree to bribe? How many nations are “desperate”? How many billions are at our disposal to stop bodies in trucks and on beaches?
The truth of the matter is brutally stark: Without a massive strengthening of border control, the West will succumb to mass migration with devastating consequences for native populations and their culture. Jardine’s two options are, in essence, merely the same, since both entail eventual mass invasion and the only difference being that one also offers the prospect of immediate national bankruptcy.
Contradictions of Opportunism
One of the most ferocious and darkly comic novels I’ve ever read is William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, the text that arguably won the novelist his 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. The novel follows the Bundren family as they take a casket containing the family matriarch across state lines so that she can be buried, in accordance with her dying wishes, among the graves of her own well-heeled kin.
As this odyssey plays out, each member of the family is revealed as having their own perspectives and intentions. But perhaps none of these quasi-migrants is more reprehensible than the grifting, begging, and selfish patriarch, Anse Bundren, who fantasizes about getting his hands on enough money for “new teeth” and, in doing so, tragically and catastrophically betrays his children.
I won’t spoil the ending, but Faulkner’s masterpiece came powerfully to mind when news broke in 2015 concerning the death of the three-year-old Syrian Aylan Kurdi, whose body washed up on a Turkish beach after a failed attempt to cross the Mediterranean.
The Kurdi family had been living in relative comfort in Turkey for three years but, according to a large number of sources, a decision was taken to illegally move the family to Europe so that Aylan’s father Abdullah could get free dental treatment and “new teeth” from one of Europe’s welfare states.
Was the Kurdi family “desperate?” What aspects of the “migrant personality” did they exhibit? Shortly after the death of young Aylan, Australian politician Cory Bernardi, a Senator of the then-governing Liberal party, told his country’s parliament that Abdullah Kurdi and his family were not real refugees and suggested many others seeking asylum in Europe were merely “opportunistic.” Bernardi stated, during the course of a debate:
I find it a bit sanctimonious for [Green] Senator [Richard] Di Natale to bring in these emotive arguments, and particularly to characterise this as some sort of humanitarian mission by using the terrible image of that young boy who was picked up from the beach after having drowned at sea … The facts remain that that terrible image was not brought about by recent events in Syria or Iraq. That boy and his family had lived in Turkey for three years. … The money for that boy’s father to pay the people smugglers was sent from Canada. The father sent them on that boat so the father could get dental treatment. … They were in no fear, they were in no persecution and they were in no danger in Turkey. … This seems to me to be becoming an opportunistic cycle.Bernardi was, predictably, subjected to scathing attacks, being described as an “embarrassment” to parliament and as worthy of being “treated with contempt.” But was he wrong?
Bernardi was of course correct to portray mass migration as “opportunistic” — a term that can serve as the opposite of “desperate” in this case, since it implies the existences of choices and opportunities and, most importantly, it returns agency to migrants.
The truth of the matter is that non-European migrants have an abundance of choices in their countries of origin.
Those who die on their way to Europe or the United States will have made a sequence of bad and ultimately fatal choices based on their material desires and wants and, indeed, their level of intelligence. We must consider that these same people look upon badly damaged and flimsy boats, or upon airtight refrigerated vehicles with no internal locking mechanisms, and decide that these are appropriate and risk-worthy methods of attempting illegal entry to their destination of choice.
To date, no media source has reported on a deceased migrant found to have previously been in a state of severe malnourishment or fundamentally ill health. In other words, deceased migrants invariably appear to have been well-fed individuals facing no immediate threats to their existence beyond their own poor decision-making.
The position of Left-Liberals in these matters can only be considered fundamentally irrational, and Catholics have been notably prominent in indulging this mindset. Sarah Teather, director of the Jesuit Refugee Service UK, has evoked the meme of “desperation” and said:
The desperation of those in the container is an indictment of our failure to provide sanctuary to those in flight for their lives. This horrendous tragedy highlights the urgent need for more safe and legal routes to migrate and to seek asylum. If the government wants to ensure this does not happen again, it is not enough to focus only on criminal gangs — it must ensure that those seeking sanctuary in Britain can get here safely. It must build bridges, not walls. [emphasis added]That we live in increasingly strange times is evidenced by voices from the Marxist hard-Left, who have also pointed out the irrationality of this position. Slavoj Žižek, for example, recently pointed out:
Pia Klemp, captain of the ship Iuventa which was saving refugees in the Mediterranean, concluded her explanation why she decided to refuse the Grand Vermeil medal awarded to her by the city of Paris with the slogan: “Documents and housing for all! Freedom of movement and residence!” If this means that — to cut a long story short — every individual has the right to move to a country of his/her choice, and that this country has the duty to provide him/her with residence, then we are dealing here with an abstract vision in the strict Hegelian sense: a vision which ignores the complex context of social totality. The problem cannot be solved at this level.In an ideal world, Žižek would elaborate on what precisely he means by “the complex context of social totality,” but elaboration and clarification are, alas, not his strong points. He is, nonetheless, absolutely correct to counterpose Klemp’s abstract vision of open borders with social totality, which one assumes to refer to Heidegger’s dictum that all essential and great things can only emerge from our having a homeland, from being rooted in tradition.
Human beings need both home and homeland. In contrast to a social totality that inheres the delineation and demarcation provided by national borders, the blank openness of a borderless world offers no homeland, and dissolves all tradition.
In a world without borders, all identities melt away. Man is reduced to nothing more than an economic integer and, in some important sense, ceases to exist as Man.
Again, it is ironic that Žižek, a Marxist of the hard-Left, should be forced to make it clear that “refugees want to have their cake and eat it. They basically expect to get the best of the Western welfare state while retaining their specific way of life, which is in some of its key features incompatible with the ideological foundations of the Western welfare state.” In other words, non-Europeans are knowingly exploiting (choosing to exploit) the altruistic and humanitarian aspects of the European personality without any intention (or perhaps even capability) of reciprocation.
Where we diverge from Žižek is his insistence that mass migration can be solved by “change to the global economic system,” by which he obviously means Marxist revolution.
While there is undoubtedly an economic component to contemporary mass migration (the welfare magnet, international crime, Globalist desire for cheap and mobile labor, wealth disparities among nations), there are other factors that cannot be overlooked.
Mass migration can be usefully understood as a semi-organic phenomenon that is also heavily cultivated.
The global expansion of mass media, especially in the last three or four decades, has brought Hollywood’s idealized visions of the multicultural West onto television sets in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Far East, with hundreds of millions of non-Europeans coming to the belief that they too can potentially be part of this wealthy multicultural paradise.
Never forget, when considering Hollywood propaganda among Whites, that these products are inevitably pumped into countries outside our own, and that they serve an equally devastating purpose. Muslim visions of Western women arguably originated in Sex and the City as much as they did in the Koran.
Hollywood debased our culture and carved it open, before broadcasting the aftermath to the rest of the world — a dunghill certain to attract flies.
What isn’t broadcast to the Third
World is the reality of the multicultural West — that it is a bitter and
divided condition that only grows more bitter and divided by the day.
The migrant sees that the streets aren’t paved with gold as they seem in
so many Hollywood productions, but are instead increasingly paved with
trash. Still, they are better than “home.” Western women, though you can
see their faces (and even their limbs!), aren’t really willing to have
sex with just anyone. This comes to the newcomer as a great
disappointment, and he becomes resentful and, in his resentment,
dangerous. And the native Whites, well, they are a tolerant bunch, but
they seem to prefer to live among themselves, and they have a culture
that simply baffles and confuses the migrant in those moments where he
pays it fleeting interest. What matters most is that he finally got his
hands on that welfare payment, thanks to his immigration lawyer Mr.
Cohen, and that, in some small way at least, he is living the life once
promised on his television screen. And there are grounds for optimism —
each day he sees more and more of his own kind on his street, in his
town, all across his new country in fact. These Whites really are a
tolerant bunch.
Technological advances in communication and transport have
facilitated the growth of forms of coordinated international chain
migration that would have been unimaginable even fifty years ago,
allowing potential migrants in almost every Third World country to plan
and execute their own journey to the West with relative (though not
risk-free) ease. Since this technological genie cannot be put back in the bottle, and economic changes are simply too gargantuan for transformation even within this century, the only solution to mass migration is a “revolution of the will” in migrant-receiving nations.
Tolerance in the West has been nurtured and cultivated by decades of consistent propaganda, of which the “dead migrant” tale is but a minor genre.
It must be rejected. And it must be rejected along with multiculturalism which is the form of society that provides illegals with anonymity and opportunity.
An illegal Vietnamese in a multicultural society simply vanishes into the mass. An illegal Vietnamese in a mono-ethnic European nation has nowhere to hide. Europe must decide that it wants to live.
Yes, what happened in Essex was nasty and tragic for those concerned. But what’s happening to the West is worse. Without a homeland, it is we who will be trapped with no exit, no internal locking mechanism. We are running out of demographic oxygen. The next time you see propaganda about migrant deaths, cast a cold eye upon it, and pass by.
[1] Polavieja, J. G., Fernández-Reino, M., & Ramos, M. (2018). Are Migrants Selected on Motivational Orientations? Selectivity Patterns amongst International Migrants in Europe. European Sociological Review.
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Soeren Kern : Germany's Migrant Rape Crisis: "Failure of the State"
Germany's Migrant Rape Crisis: "Failure of the State"
- "Susanna is dead. Maria from Freiburg; Mia from Kandel; Mireille from Flensburg; and now Susanna from Mainz...." — Alice Weidel, co-leader AfD party.
- "Susanna's death is not a blind stroke of fate. Susanna's death is the result of many years of organized irresponsibility and the scandalous failure of our asylum and immigration policies. Susanna is victim of an out-of-control leftwing multicultural ideology that stops at nothing to impose its sense of moral superiority." — Alice Weidel, co-leader AfD party.
- "On the day of Susanna's murder, you [Merkel] testified in parliament that you have handled the migrant crisis responsibly. Do you dare to repeat that claim to Susanna's parents?" — Alice Weidel, co-leader AfD party.
The rape and murder of a 14-year-old Jewish girl by a failed Iraqi
asylum seeker has cast a renewed spotlight on Germany's migrant rape
crisis, which has continued unabated for years amid official complicity
and public apathy.
Thousands of women and children have been raped or sexually assaulted in Germany since Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed into the country more than one million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
The latest crime, entirely preventable, is uniquely reprehensible in that it highlights in one act the many insidious consequences of Germany's open-door migration policy — including the failure to vet those allowed into the country and the practice of releasing migrant criminals back onto German streets instead of incarcerating or deporting them.
The crime also exposes the gross negligence of Germany's political class, which appears to be more concerned with preserving multiculturalism and the rights of predatory migrants than protecting German women and children from them.
Police say that Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old Iraqi Kurd, raped Susanna Maria Feldman, strangled her and then dumped her body in a wooded area alongside railroad tracks on the outskirts of Wiesbaden. Bashar then fled to Iraq on false identity papers.
Feldman had been missing from her home in Mainz since May 22. Her mother filed a missing person report on May 23. Police, however, did not even begin to search for the girl until more than a week later, when an unnamed 13-year-old boy, a migrant living in the same refugee shelter as Bashar, contacted the police. Feldman's body was finally recovered on June 6.
Bashar arrived in Germany in October 2015, at the height of the migrant influx, along with his parents and five siblings; claiming to be refugees, they turned out to be economic migrants. Bashar's asylum request was rejected in December 2016. He should have been deported, but after he filed an appeal, German authorities allowed him to stay.
During his three years in Germany, Bashar chalked up an extensive criminal record, including physical assault of law enforcement officers, violent robbery at knifepoint and possession of illegal weapons.
Police said that Bashar was also a suspect in the March 2018 rape of an 11-year-old girl living in the same refugee shelter where he and his family were staying.
Bashar was able to flee Germany under a false identity because of bureaucratic incompetence: federal border police failed to check if the name on his plane ticket matched the name on his identity papers.
Bashar was arrested in northern Iraq on June 8 and was extradited to Germany a day later. He is currently being held at a correctional facility in Wiesbaden.
Susanna's murder was the fourth German teenager to be murdered by illegal migrants during the past 18 months.
The level of public outrage over Susanna's case, however, suggests that Germany may be reaching a tipping point: the German government is finally being held to account for its role in the migrant rape crisis.
"The government should beg for forgiveness from Susanna's parents," said the mass circulation Bild. "The only thing that is worse than the murder of a child is the murder of a child by a criminal who should not have been in our country."
The leader of the Free Democrats (FDP), Christian Lindner, said that the crime raises many questions:
"Why are rejected asylum seekers not deported more consistently? Why could the perpetrator and his family flee under a false identity?"
"This is typical of our German security agencies," FDP politician Alexander Graf Lambsdorff said. "There are simply too many gaps in this system. This has been terribly upsetting for many years."
SPD manager Carsten Schneider said what had to be quickly clarified was "how the suspect was able to escape, and how he can be brought to court in Germany as quickly as possible."
"The Federal Interior Minister must ensure that the existing control mechanisms are also used during entry and exit," said Burkhard Lischka, an SPD spokesman. "With such questionable papers and in view of the destination, the Federal Police could have determined with a simple fingerprint comparison that a criminal is on the run."
"The cruel murder of Susanna fills me with great sadness and anger," said Eckhardt Rehberg of the CDU. "As a politician responsible for the budget, I say...the entire asylum process needs to be fundamentally reshaped. We will provide the money for that."
The Alternative for Germany (AfD), the anti-immigration party, called for the resignation of the entire federal government. In a video posted on Twitter, AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said:
Thousands of women and children have been raped or sexually assaulted in Germany since Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed into the country more than one million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
The latest crime, entirely preventable, is uniquely reprehensible in that it highlights in one act the many insidious consequences of Germany's open-door migration policy — including the failure to vet those allowed into the country and the practice of releasing migrant criminals back onto German streets instead of incarcerating or deporting them.
The crime also exposes the gross negligence of Germany's political class, which appears to be more concerned with preserving multiculturalism and the rights of predatory migrants than protecting German women and children from them.
Police say that Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old Iraqi Kurd, raped Susanna Maria Feldman, strangled her and then dumped her body in a wooded area alongside railroad tracks on the outskirts of Wiesbaden. Bashar then fled to Iraq on false identity papers.
Feldman had been missing from her home in Mainz since May 22. Her mother filed a missing person report on May 23. Police, however, did not even begin to search for the girl until more than a week later, when an unnamed 13-year-old boy, a migrant living in the same refugee shelter as Bashar, contacted the police. Feldman's body was finally recovered on June 6.
14-year-old
Susanna Maria Feldman (inset) was raped and murdered by Ali Bashar, a
failed Iraqi asylum seeker in Germany. He dumped her body in a wooded
area on the outskirts of Wiesbaden. (Image sources: Feldman - Facebook;
Wiesbaden - Maxpixel)
|
Bashar arrived in Germany in October 2015, at the height of the migrant influx, along with his parents and five siblings; claiming to be refugees, they turned out to be economic migrants. Bashar's asylum request was rejected in December 2016. He should have been deported, but after he filed an appeal, German authorities allowed him to stay.
During his three years in Germany, Bashar chalked up an extensive criminal record, including physical assault of law enforcement officers, violent robbery at knifepoint and possession of illegal weapons.
Police said that Bashar was also a suspect in the March 2018 rape of an 11-year-old girl living in the same refugee shelter where he and his family were staying.
Bashar was able to flee Germany under a false identity because of bureaucratic incompetence: federal border police failed to check if the name on his plane ticket matched the name on his identity papers.
Bashar was arrested in northern Iraq on June 8 and was extradited to Germany a day later. He is currently being held at a correctional facility in Wiesbaden.
Susanna's murder was the fourth German teenager to be murdered by illegal migrants during the past 18 months.
- October 16, 2016. Maria Ladenburger, a 19-year-old
medical student from Freiburg, was raped and murdered after returning
home from a party hosted by her school's medical faculty. Her attacker
was Hussein Khavari, who entered Germany in November 2015 without
identification papers. He claimed to have been born in Afghanistan in
November 1999. Because of his alleged age (16), he was granted asylum as
an underage unaccompanied migrant and placed with a foster family.
After Khavari was arrested as a suspect in the Ladenburger case, the newsmagazine Stern reported that in February 2014, Khavari had been sentenced to ten years in prison for attempted murder for pushing a 20-year-old woman over a cliff on the Greek island of Corfu. The woman survived the attack and Khavari was released after serving 18 months in prison, based on an amnesty for juvenile offenders. He then migrated to Germany.
During his trial in Greece, Khavari told the court that he had been born in Iran in January 1996 and had arrived in Europe in January 2013.
During his trial in Germany, Khavari confessed to raping and killing Ladenburger. It emerged that Khavari was born in Iran on January 29, 1984 and that at the time he killed Ladenburger, he was actually 32. On March 22, 2018, Khavari was sentenced to life in prison for rape and murder, but according to German law, he may apply for parole after serving 15 years.
- December 27, 2017. Mia Valentin, a 15-year-old girl from
Kandel, a small town in the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, near
the German border with France, was stabbed to death at a local drugstore. Her attacker was Abdul Mobin, a failed Afghan asylum seeker who claimed to be 15 years old.
Valentin and her attacker had been in a relationship for several months, but after she ended it in early December 2017, Mobin began to threaten her. On December 15, the girl's parents filed a formal complaint to police. Police visited Mobin on December 17, and again on the morning of December 27. Later that day, Mobin followed Valentin into the drugstore and stabbed her with a kitchen knife he had purchased at the same store. The girl died a short time later.
Mobin had arrived in Germany in April 2016 and initially resided at a refugee shelter in Frankfurt. He was later transferred to a refugee shelter in Germersheim, a small town in the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, and then to a youth facility in nearby Neustadt. His asylum claim was rejected in February 2017, but he was not deported. Mobin, who was known to police after he punched a student at Valentin's school, is being held in custody while German authorities try to determine his true age.
- March 12, 2018. Mireille Bold, a 17-year-old girl from Flensburg, was stabbed to death
by Ahmad Gulbhar, an 18-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan. He
allegedly became enraged and killed her after she refused to wear a
headscarf convert to Islam. Gulbhar had arrived in Germany in 2015 as an
underage unaccompanied migrant. His asylum application was rejected but
he was never deported.
Bold, who lived in the same building as her attacker, had called police for help at least once before she was killed. A good friend of Bold's family told the newspaper Bild:
"Ahmad was a jealous rooster who always wanted to control her. They have been in a relationship since January 2016, but there were constant rows. He insisted that she convert to Islam and always wear a headscarf.
The attacker is being held in pre-trial detention.
"She wasn't sure. Whenever she went scarfless there was trouble. Mireille told me that he fled alone from Afghanistan and had a great longing for his family. He was supposed to have a job in a civil engineering company. Once when she met with him he called her every two minutes on her phone demanding to know what was happening."
The level of public outrage over Susanna's case, however, suggests that Germany may be reaching a tipping point: the German government is finally being held to account for its role in the migrant rape crisis.
"The government should beg for forgiveness from Susanna's parents," said the mass circulation Bild. "The only thing that is worse than the murder of a child is the murder of a child by a criminal who should not have been in our country."
The leader of the Free Democrats (FDP), Christian Lindner, said that the crime raises many questions:
"Why are rejected asylum seekers not deported more consistently? Why could the perpetrator and his family flee under a false identity?"
"This is typical of our German security agencies," FDP politician Alexander Graf Lambsdorff said. "There are simply too many gaps in this system. This has been terribly upsetting for many years."
SPD manager Carsten Schneider said what had to be quickly clarified was "how the suspect was able to escape, and how he can be brought to court in Germany as quickly as possible."
"The Federal Interior Minister must ensure that the existing control mechanisms are also used during entry and exit," said Burkhard Lischka, an SPD spokesman. "With such questionable papers and in view of the destination, the Federal Police could have determined with a simple fingerprint comparison that a criminal is on the run."
"The cruel murder of Susanna fills me with great sadness and anger," said Eckhardt Rehberg of the CDU. "As a politician responsible for the budget, I say...the entire asylum process needs to be fundamentally reshaped. We will provide the money for that."
The Alternative for Germany (AfD), the anti-immigration party, called for the resignation of the entire federal government. In a video posted on Twitter, AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said:
"Susanna is dead. Maria from Freiburg; Mia from Kandel; Mireille from Flensburg; and now Susanna from Mainz....The newsmagazine Stern concluded:
"Susanna's death is not a blind stroke of fate. Susanna's death is the result of many years of organized irresponsibility and the scandalous failure of our asylum and immigration policies. Susanna is victim of an out-of-control leftwing multicultural ideology that stops at nothing to impose its sense of moral superiority. Susanna is also another victim of Chancellor Angela Merkel's hypocritical and selfish welcome policy.
"Legally, Ali Bashar should never have been allowed into Germany. His asylum request was rejected more than two years ago, and he should have been deported. Bashar was known to police for physical assault, attacking police officers, and possessing illegal weapons. In March 2018, he was suspected of raping an 11-year-old girl at a refugee shelter. According to the law, Bashar should have had to leave Germany a long time ago or be arrested.
"An absurd asylum law and a grotesque asylum policy...it is lenient toward asylum cheaters and criminals but ignores the genuine concerns of German citizens.
"Ali Bashar, his parents and five siblings lived here on the taxpayer's dime, they could not be deported, but after his Ali's crime, they somehow found the money to flee Germany on falsified documents. No problem in a Germany with open borders.
"On the day of Susanna's murder, you [Merkel] testified in parliament that you have handled the migrant crisis responsibly. Do you dare to repeat that claim to Susanna's parents? Well, no. Your hard-heartedness and self-righteousness means you feel you are above offering the victims of your policies a personal word. This is unacceptable to us citizens. Will you finally accept responsibility, Mrs. Merkel? You and your entire cabinet should resign to make possible another asylum policy so that the parents in this country no longer need to fear for the safety of their children."
"The emotional reactions to Susanna's case illustrate how Germany has changed. Already in the summer of the refugee crisis, when hundreds of thousands of people came into the country, there were warnings that the mood in the population could tip....Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
"The case of Susanna awakens the image of a loss of control, an overstretched state that no longer has a grip on asylum policy — especially in a society that loves law and order. There are now repeated demands for stricter laws. The current scandal over maladministration at the Federal Office of Migration and Refugees [immigration officials accepted cash bribes in exchange for granting asylum to more than 1,200 migrants] seems to emphasize the impression of a failure of the state."
Judith Bergman : The Relentless Radicalization of Sweden
The Relentless Radicalization of Sweden
- Swedish police report that Muslim children have told their classmates they will cut their throats, while showing them beheadings on their mobile phones, according to the new study of Salafism in Sweden by the Swedish Defence University.
- "Many women live worse [lives] here than they would have in their former countries" — Swedish care worker.
- The inability -- willful blindness is probably a more apt description -- to see that jihadist terrorism does not emerge from a vacuum, but is nurtured in particular environments, is hardly an exclusively Swedish situation. The insistence of so many European and other Western authorities on describing terrorist attacks as instances of "mental illness" illustrate it perfectly.
A new study[1]
of Salafism in Sweden, conducted by the Swedish Defence University,
paints a bleak picture of the ongoing radicalization of Muslims in
Sweden.
The Salaf are the "pious ancestors" during the first three generations of the followers of Mohammed; its ideology has come to be associated over the last few decades with al-Qaeda and ISIS, as well as with local al-Qaeda affiliates. According to the study, Salafists, who believe in Islam as Mohammed's early followers practiced it, tend to reject Western society in favor of a "pure" Islam: "Not all Salafists are jihadists, but all jihadists are Salafists". [2]
Although the study does not give an estimate of how many Salafists are in Sweden, it does describe how Salafist milieus there have evolved and grown stronger, especially during the past decade, and lists several examples of the influence they wield in different Swedish cities and localities.
"Salafists", the authors of the study conclude, "...advocate gender segregation, demand that women veil themselves to limit 'sexual temptation', restrict women's role in the public sphere and strongly oppose listening to music and some sports activities"[3].
According to the study, many Salafists also tell Muslims not to have Swedish friends, and refer to them as "kufr", the Arabic term for a non-Muslim or "disbeliever". One Salafist preacher, Anas Khalifa, said:
In Borås, some children will not drink the water at the school or paint with watercolors there, because they say the water is "Christian". The police report that Muslim children have told their classmates they will cut their throats, while showing them beheadings on their mobile phones. There are examples of "adolescents arriving at mosques at the end of a school day to 'wash' themselves after having interacted with [non-Muslim] society". Care workers [health care, child care, etc.] in the city have testified to how men exercise control over women, checking on them even in waiting rooms[6]. One care worker said:
In Västerås, religious influence is mixed with crime. "It could be a bunch of guys coming into the grocery store. If the woman at the cashier is not veiled, they take what they want without paying, they call the cashier 'Swedish whore' and spit on her," said a police officer in the study. Other examples include Syrians and Kurds who run stores and restaurants in the area and are questioned by young Muslims about their religion. If the answer is not Islam, they are harassed. In other cases, boys as young as 10-12 years have approached older women in the area, asking them whether they are Muslim, telling them "this is our area".[7]
In Gothenburg, according to the study[8], Salafists told Muslims not to vote in the most recent elections because it is "haram" (forbidden). "They said that on the day of judgment you will be responsible for the actions of all stupid politicians if you vote. They stood at polling stations... At one polling station they waved an IS [Islamic State] flag", a local official told the authors of the study. According to one imam in the city, Gothenburg has been the capital of Wahhabism (a Saudi version of Salafism) in Europe since the 1990s.[9]
Out of the 300 Swedish Muslims who joined ISIS in Syria and Iraq, almost one third came from Gothenburg.[10] (In relation to their total population, more people have traveled from Sweden to join jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq than from most European countries -- only Belgium and Austria have a higher proportion[11]). Somali-Canadian preacher Said Regeah, speaking at the Salafist Bellevue Mosque in Gothenburg, has "raised the importance of people being born 'pure' and that only Muslims are pure. All are born as Muslims, but it is the parents who shape them to become 'Jews, Christians, or Zoroastrians'".[12]
The study also reports that non-Muslim business owners have experienced having their facilities vandalized with Islamic State graffiti and that Christian priests have received threats of decapitation[13]. One man, Samir, said, "If you do not follow Islam, people ostracize you. There are parents here who put veils on their three-year-olds. It is unreal. We are not in Iraq".[14]
Another man, Anwar, was denied service in a Muslim restaurant because he is not religious. He points out that society is letting secular Muslims down: "I don't need a Bible or a Koran in my life. The only book I need is... the [Swedish] law. But if society isn't even on your side, what can you do?"[15]
In the Stockholm area, the study estimates that there are currently up to 150 Salafist jihadists[16]. Salafists are especially concentrated in the Järva area, a "no go zone". Sometimes the jihadist and the criminal elements overlap, and these Muslims terrorize other people who live in the area. One woman said that Salafists and Islamists have come to dominate businesses, basement mosques, and cultural associations during the past ten years, and that "Swedes have no idea how much influence political Islam has in the suburb". She described how even children are gender segregated and that religious leaders tell women not to tell the authorities if their husband abuses them. "Swedish laws are not applied in the suburbs".[17]
The study concludes with a critique of Swedish authorities for their apparent inability to link individual radical Muslims to the "environments that form their ideas and in certain cases have facilitated the will to join more radical and violent groups". The study mentions the following as an example:
The authors of the study also mention that schools and other local authorities do not know how to deal with the challenges created by the Salafists. The study mentions, for example, that a Muslim schoolgirl wanted to take off her headscarf to play hairdresser with the other children, but the Swedish personnel did not allow it out of respect for her parents' wishes. In an example from a Swedish preschool, a little girl did not want to wear her headscarf but the Swedish personnel forced it on her, "even though it felt wrong", because it was the parents' wish. Swedish school personnel have also described that they do not know how to act when children want to eat and drink during Ramadan, but the parents have instructed that they must fast.[19]
The study is an important first step in Sweden finally acknowledging that there is a problem, but unless the relevant Swedish authorities -- including the Swedish government and the political leaders, who refuse to acknowledge reality in Sweden -- read and internalize it, the study will have been done in vain.
[1] "Between Salafism and Salafist Jihadism - Impact and Challenges for Swedish Society", published on June 28. The study was commissioned by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency.
[2] Between Salafism and Salafist Jihadism - Impact and Challenges for Swedish Society, p 14.
[3] Ibid., p 24
[4] Ibid., p 132
[5] Ibid., p 223
[6] Borås is described on pp162ff of the study.
[7] Västerås is described on pp 168ff.
[8] Ibid., p 186
[9] Ibid., p 182
[10] Ibid., p 103
[11] Ibid., p 107
[12] Ibid., p 131
[13] Ibid., p 186
[14] Ibid., p 187
[15] Ibid., p 187
[16] Ibid., p 210
[17] Ibid., p 213
[18] Ibid., p 109
[19] Ibid., p 194
The Salaf are the "pious ancestors" during the first three generations of the followers of Mohammed; its ideology has come to be associated over the last few decades with al-Qaeda and ISIS, as well as with local al-Qaeda affiliates. According to the study, Salafists, who believe in Islam as Mohammed's early followers practiced it, tend to reject Western society in favor of a "pure" Islam: "Not all Salafists are jihadists, but all jihadists are Salafists". [2]
Although the study does not give an estimate of how many Salafists are in Sweden, it does describe how Salafist milieus there have evolved and grown stronger, especially during the past decade, and lists several examples of the influence they wield in different Swedish cities and localities.
The
Swedish Defence University has published a new study that paints a
bleak picture of the ongoing radicalization of Muslims in Sweden.
(I99pema/Wikimedia Commons)
|
"Salafists", the authors of the study conclude, "...advocate gender segregation, demand that women veil themselves to limit 'sexual temptation', restrict women's role in the public sphere and strongly oppose listening to music and some sports activities"[3].
According to the study, many Salafists also tell Muslims not to have Swedish friends, and refer to them as "kufr", the Arabic term for a non-Muslim or "disbeliever". One Salafist preacher, Anas Khalifa, said:
"Does that mean that if you meet a Christian or Jew you should beat him or threaten him? No. There is no war between you and Christians and Jews in your school, for example. You hate him for Allah's sake. You hate that he does not believe in Allah. But you want from your heart that he will love Allah. So you have to work with them, talk with them, because you want Allah to guide them". [4]The Salafists, apparently, have divided Sweden geographically between them. According to the study:
"It is interesting that the Salafist preachers, on which the study focuses, appear to be more in cooperation with each other, rather than rivals. Instead, these preachers seem to divide their da'wa (mission) into different geographical areas..."[5].The study's findings from different cities where Salafists are active include:
In Borås, some children will not drink the water at the school or paint with watercolors there, because they say the water is "Christian". The police report that Muslim children have told their classmates they will cut their throats, while showing them beheadings on their mobile phones. There are examples of "adolescents arriving at mosques at the end of a school day to 'wash' themselves after having interacted with [non-Muslim] society". Care workers [health care, child care, etc.] in the city have testified to how men exercise control over women, checking on them even in waiting rooms[6]. One care worker said:
"I realized that there is a network that controls the women so they won't be left alone with the care workers. They are not given a chance to tell anyone about their situation. Many women live worse [lives] here than they would have in their former countries".This kind of control of women appears to be taking place in practically all the Swedish cities mentioned in the study.
In Västerås, religious influence is mixed with crime. "It could be a bunch of guys coming into the grocery store. If the woman at the cashier is not veiled, they take what they want without paying, they call the cashier 'Swedish whore' and spit on her," said a police officer in the study. Other examples include Syrians and Kurds who run stores and restaurants in the area and are questioned by young Muslims about their religion. If the answer is not Islam, they are harassed. In other cases, boys as young as 10-12 years have approached older women in the area, asking them whether they are Muslim, telling them "this is our area".[7]
In Gothenburg, according to the study[8], Salafists told Muslims not to vote in the most recent elections because it is "haram" (forbidden). "They said that on the day of judgment you will be responsible for the actions of all stupid politicians if you vote. They stood at polling stations... At one polling station they waved an IS [Islamic State] flag", a local official told the authors of the study. According to one imam in the city, Gothenburg has been the capital of Wahhabism (a Saudi version of Salafism) in Europe since the 1990s.[9]
Out of the 300 Swedish Muslims who joined ISIS in Syria and Iraq, almost one third came from Gothenburg.[10] (In relation to their total population, more people have traveled from Sweden to join jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq than from most European countries -- only Belgium and Austria have a higher proportion[11]). Somali-Canadian preacher Said Regeah, speaking at the Salafist Bellevue Mosque in Gothenburg, has "raised the importance of people being born 'pure' and that only Muslims are pure. All are born as Muslims, but it is the parents who shape them to become 'Jews, Christians, or Zoroastrians'".[12]
The study also reports that non-Muslim business owners have experienced having their facilities vandalized with Islamic State graffiti and that Christian priests have received threats of decapitation[13]. One man, Samir, said, "If you do not follow Islam, people ostracize you. There are parents here who put veils on their three-year-olds. It is unreal. We are not in Iraq".[14]
Another man, Anwar, was denied service in a Muslim restaurant because he is not religious. He points out that society is letting secular Muslims down: "I don't need a Bible or a Koran in my life. The only book I need is... the [Swedish] law. But if society isn't even on your side, what can you do?"[15]
In the Stockholm area, the study estimates that there are currently up to 150 Salafist jihadists[16]. Salafists are especially concentrated in the Järva area, a "no go zone". Sometimes the jihadist and the criminal elements overlap, and these Muslims terrorize other people who live in the area. One woman said that Salafists and Islamists have come to dominate businesses, basement mosques, and cultural associations during the past ten years, and that "Swedes have no idea how much influence political Islam has in the suburb". She described how even children are gender segregated and that religious leaders tell women not to tell the authorities if their husband abuses them. "Swedish laws are not applied in the suburbs".[17]
The study concludes with a critique of Swedish authorities for their apparent inability to link individual radical Muslims to the "environments that form their ideas and in certain cases have facilitated the will to join more radical and violent groups". The study mentions the following as an example:
"When the then-National Coordinator Against Violent Extremism said that the question of why so many people chose to travel to IS from Sweden was 'a million dollar question', it is an illustration of the overall inability of Swedish authorities (with the exception of police and security police) to see that this problem has not emerged from a vacuum".[18]This inability -- or possibly willful blindness -- to see that jihadist terrorism does not emerge from a vacuum, but is nurtured in particular environments is hardly an exclusively Swedish situation. The insistence of so many European and other Western authorities to describe terrorist attacks as instances of "mental illness" illustrate it perfectly.
The authors of the study also mention that schools and other local authorities do not know how to deal with the challenges created by the Salafists. The study mentions, for example, that a Muslim schoolgirl wanted to take off her headscarf to play hairdresser with the other children, but the Swedish personnel did not allow it out of respect for her parents' wishes. In an example from a Swedish preschool, a little girl did not want to wear her headscarf but the Swedish personnel forced it on her, "even though it felt wrong", because it was the parents' wish. Swedish school personnel have also described that they do not know how to act when children want to eat and drink during Ramadan, but the parents have instructed that they must fast.[19]
The study is an important first step in Sweden finally acknowledging that there is a problem, but unless the relevant Swedish authorities -- including the Swedish government and the political leaders, who refuse to acknowledge reality in Sweden -- read and internalize it, the study will have been done in vain.
Judith Bergman is a columnist, lawyer and political analyst.
[1] "Between Salafism and Salafist Jihadism - Impact and Challenges for Swedish Society", published on June 28. The study was commissioned by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency.
[2] Between Salafism and Salafist Jihadism - Impact and Challenges for Swedish Society, p 14.
[3] Ibid., p 24
[4] Ibid., p 132
[5] Ibid., p 223
[6] Borås is described on pp162ff of the study.
[7] Västerås is described on pp 168ff.
[8] Ibid., p 186
[9] Ibid., p 182
[10] Ibid., p 103
[11] Ibid., p 107
[12] Ibid., p 131
[13] Ibid., p 186
[14] Ibid., p 187
[15] Ibid., p 187
[16] Ibid., p 210
[17] Ibid., p 213
[18] Ibid., p 109
[19] Ibid., p 194
Giulio Meotti : Mass Migration: "The Fatal Solvent of the EU"
Mass Migration: "The Fatal Solvent of the EU"
- Today, 510 million Europeans live in the European Union with 1.3 billion Africans facing them. If the Africans follow the example of other parts of the developing world, such as the Mexicans in the US, "in thirty years... Europe will have between 150 and 200 million Afro-Europeans, compared with 9 million today". Smith calls this scenario "Eurafrique".
- The controversial quota system for migrants has already failed. The European Court of Human Rights condemned Hungary for detaining migrants. European governments cannot stop, deport, arrest or repatriate the migrants. What do the authorities in Brussels suggest? Bring everyone to Europe?
- French Jews have fallen victim to a form of ethnic cleansing, according to a manifesto signed by, among others, former French President Nicholas Sarkozy and former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.
"Far from leading to fusion, Europe's migration crisis is leading to fission", Stanford's historian Niall Ferguson
recently wrote. "Increasingly, I believe that the issue of migration
will be seen by future historians as the fatal solvent of the EU". Week
after week, Mr. Ferguson's prediction seems to be turning into a
reality.
Not only does Europe continue to fragment as anti-immigration sentiment gathers political strength, but, as a result of the migrant crisis, the EU's border-free internal zone, Europe's most cherished prize after the Second World War, is now defined as "at risk" by the Italian government, among other governments, such and Austria.
Immigration is also redefining the intra-EU contract.
The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, the so called "Visegrad Group", recently called for EU border defense. "We have to have a Europe capable of defending us", Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said as well, after he was invited to join the Visegrad meeting.
The new Italian populist government, after Italy saw more than 700,000 migrants arrive on its shores in the past five years, also embraced a hard-line policy. Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini
recently closed Italy's ports to migrant vessels. In Germany, after the
German chancellor clashed on immigration with her interior minister, Horst Seehofer, migrant policy could also lead to the "end of Merkel's tenure".
"Italy's new populist government signals a major challenge to the European status quo, but not in the way most observers initially expected", the author Walter Russell Mead recently commented in The Wall Street Journal. "The governing coalition has put the challenge to its euro policy on hold. Instead it is turning to a subject on which the European establishment is more vulnerable: migration".
The entire European political consensus is fracturing under the seismic impact of the migrant wave. Migration to Europe has become a political issue "as toxic as ever", the New York Times just noted about the current debate inside the European Union.
The EU's current trouble seems to come from a deafness among the policy elites, who refuse to take into account the problems for their citizens that have followed unvetted mass immigration.
Mass migration in the last years has simply created major troubles for Europe's internal stability. First, there has been a security challenge. According to a new report by the Heritage Foundation:
The threat Europe is facing if it refuses to close and control the borders is examined by Stephen Smith, an expert on Africa and admired by French President Emmanuel Macron, in his new book, The Rush to Europe: Young Africa on the Way to the Old Continent. Today, he notes, 510 million Europeans live in the European Union with 1.3 billion Africans facing them. "In thirty-five years, 450 million Europeans will face some 2.5 billion Africans, five times as many", Smith predicts. If the Africans follow the example of other parts of the developing world, such as the Mexicans in the US, "in thirty years", according to Smith, "Europe will have between 150 and 200 million Afro-Europeans, compared with 9 million today". Smith called this scenario "Eurafrique". Europe's largest migration wave since World War II has also become an increasingly urgent problem as Europe's indigenous populations continue to age and diminish in number.
The controversial quota system for migrants has already failed. The European governments also cannot really deport migrants. In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned the Italian government and ordered it to pay thousands of euros to two dozen immigrants it deported to Libya. Italian authorities had intercepted the migrants in the Mediterranean Sea when they were trying to get to the Italian island of Lampedusa from Libya. Three years later, the European Court again condemned the Italian government for deporting migrants. The European Court of Human Rights also condemned Spain in its judgment to expel of a group of 75-80 migrants from the Melilla enclave. The ECHR then condemned Hungary for detaining migrants. Europe cannot stop, deport, arrest and repatriate the migrants.
What do the authorities in Brussels suggest? Bring everyone to Europe?
Andrew Michta, dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, recently wrote that, under this mass migration, European democracies risk their own "decomposition". We will not only see the "fission" of the already fragile European Union, but that of the Western civilization as well.
Not only does Europe continue to fragment as anti-immigration sentiment gathers political strength, but, as a result of the migrant crisis, the EU's border-free internal zone, Europe's most cherished prize after the Second World War, is now defined as "at risk" by the Italian government, among other governments, such and Austria.
Immigration is also redefining the intra-EU contract.
The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, the so called "Visegrad Group", recently called for EU border defense. "We have to have a Europe capable of defending us", Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said as well, after he was invited to join the Visegrad meeting.
This
year, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (second from left) was invited
to join the leaders of the four "Visegrad Group" countries (Czech
Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) at their June 21 summit meeting.
High on the agenda were the issues of mass-migration and border
protection. (Image source: Austrian Federal Chancellor's Office)
|
"Italy's new populist government signals a major challenge to the European status quo, but not in the way most observers initially expected", the author Walter Russell Mead recently commented in The Wall Street Journal. "The governing coalition has put the challenge to its euro policy on hold. Instead it is turning to a subject on which the European establishment is more vulnerable: migration".
The entire European political consensus is fracturing under the seismic impact of the migrant wave. Migration to Europe has become a political issue "as toxic as ever", the New York Times just noted about the current debate inside the European Union.
The EU's current trouble seems to come from a deafness among the policy elites, who refuse to take into account the problems for their citizens that have followed unvetted mass immigration.
Mass migration in the last years has simply created major troubles for Europe's internal stability. First, there has been a security challenge. According to a new report by the Heritage Foundation:
"Almost 1,000 people have been injured or killed in terrorist attacks featuring asylum seekers or refugees since 2014. Over the past four years, 16 percent of Islamist plots in Europe featured asylum seekers or refugees. ISIS has direct connections to the majority of plots, with Germany targeted most often, and Syrians more frequently involved than any other nationality. Nearly three-quarters of plotters carry out, or have their plans thwarted, within two years of arrival in Europe.There is also a severe challenge to ethnic and religious coexistence posed by immigration. French Jews have fallen victim to a form of ethnic cleansing, according to a manifesto signed by, among others, former French President Nicholas Sarkozy and former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. "Ten per cent of the Jewish citizens of the Paris region have recently been forced to move because they were no longer secure in certain council estates" the manifesto said. "This is a quiet ethnic cleansing".
...
"Since January 2014, 44 refugees or asylum seekers have been involved in 32 Islamist terror plots in Europe. These plots led to 814 injuries and 182 deaths."
The threat Europe is facing if it refuses to close and control the borders is examined by Stephen Smith, an expert on Africa and admired by French President Emmanuel Macron, in his new book, The Rush to Europe: Young Africa on the Way to the Old Continent. Today, he notes, 510 million Europeans live in the European Union with 1.3 billion Africans facing them. "In thirty-five years, 450 million Europeans will face some 2.5 billion Africans, five times as many", Smith predicts. If the Africans follow the example of other parts of the developing world, such as the Mexicans in the US, "in thirty years", according to Smith, "Europe will have between 150 and 200 million Afro-Europeans, compared with 9 million today". Smith called this scenario "Eurafrique". Europe's largest migration wave since World War II has also become an increasingly urgent problem as Europe's indigenous populations continue to age and diminish in number.
The controversial quota system for migrants has already failed. The European governments also cannot really deport migrants. In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned the Italian government and ordered it to pay thousands of euros to two dozen immigrants it deported to Libya. Italian authorities had intercepted the migrants in the Mediterranean Sea when they were trying to get to the Italian island of Lampedusa from Libya. Three years later, the European Court again condemned the Italian government for deporting migrants. The European Court of Human Rights also condemned Spain in its judgment to expel of a group of 75-80 migrants from the Melilla enclave. The ECHR then condemned Hungary for detaining migrants. Europe cannot stop, deport, arrest and repatriate the migrants.
What do the authorities in Brussels suggest? Bring everyone to Europe?
Andrew Michta, dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, recently wrote that, under this mass migration, European democracies risk their own "decomposition". We will not only see the "fission" of the already fragile European Union, but that of the Western civilization as well.
Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
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