Time Overdue To Slow Immigration And Take The Consequences – OpEd

By Jonathan Power

Was the cultured and sophisticated Italian writer, Oriani Fallaci, speaking for the large numbers of working class people who end up being the ones who usually play host to immigrants, when she wrote in a leading liberal Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, of her experience of trying to get rid of Somali immigrants living in a tent, performing all their bodily functions next to Florence’s cathedral?

“I don’t go singing Ave Marias or Paternosters before the tomb of Mohammed. I don’t piss or shit at the feet of their minarets. When I find myself in their countries, I never forget that I am a guest and a foreigner. I am careful not to offend them with clothing or behaviour that are normal to us but inadmissible to them. Why should we respect people who don’t respect us? Why should we defend their culture or presumed culture when they don’t respect ours. I want to defend our culture, and I say that I prefer Dante Alighieri or Omar Khayyam. And the sky opens. They crucify me ‘Racist, racist’.”

Of course she sounds like that. Nevertheless, her thoughts (if not so elegantly expressed) are shared by probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Europeans and North Americans.

When Muslim leaders publicly burnt Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses” or youths in Marseilles burnt down synagogues and school buses or a father (a Turkish Kurd) murders his daughter in Stockholm because she is dating a Swedish young man or when young immigrant males pushed themselves into a public celebration outside Cologne Cathedral and started fondling women or are participants in rising crime levels, it is difficult even for hardened liberals not to let such similar thoughts cross their minds.

Prejudice on the host countries’ side…but

Needless to say, there has been a lot of prejudice on the host countries’ side. There has been a tendency to blame immigrants for crime. In reality the crime levels of the first generation have been significantly below that of the host population. But heavy-handed policing has worked over the decades to make the prejudice self-fulfilling. Moreover, it helped lay the conditions for the second generation to embrace crime.

Persecuted and hounded for what they hadn’t done, it led, in the past, to political militancy on the one hand and a devil-will-take-me attitude to the binding constraints of society on the other. Coupled with poor achievement at school and, too often, closed doors in the job market for those, unlike their parents, would not settle for dirt, docility and low pay, the ingredients for a tormented and unfruitful life were well mixed.

There is no doubt that the violence against immigrants came first—the turds through the letter box, the gang attacks, the knifings, the shootings and the firebombing of immigrants’ shops. The first generation of immigrants was essentially passive, but the second, particularly if they were jobless, were ripe not for revolution- that did not much interest them- but for spite and mayhem, perhaps even revenge.

There is not much reason to believe today that much of this will be repeated if immigrants continue to pour in. In northern England and in parts of London, around numerous French, German, Italian, Greek and Spanish cities, in the suburbs of Amsterdam, large numbers of immigrants, partly out of comfort, partly out of misplaced housing policies, have been thrown together in concentrated heaps.

Whilst in some cases it satisfies an urge to live close to one’s countrymen, more often it has led to a social segregation from the host country that allows the immigrants to cut themselves off from the rather rapid evolution of contemporary European societies. Many of the new migrants and refugees will be naturally drawn to such places.

Oriani Fallaci overstates it in an unpleasant way. But she bites on a bitter kernel of a truth of human experience- not to adjust to the norms of a society that is their host is extreme narrow mindedness.

The refugees that have poured into parts of Europe have to realize that they come not just to a job (hopefully), a school, a hospital and a social security system, but also to an organic society with its own long history, beliefs and strong traditions. They can ask for freedom of belief for themselves, but they cannot try to impose their views on the society around them, whether it is religious values or political persuasions, especially if it means breaking the more important conventions of the host society.

Educate and inform them

If they cannot see that for themselves, then they must be educated and informed (as in Finland which runs compulsory courses). They must be educated as part of the process of formal admittance. If they are illegal migrants, they must be deported home to join the queue to become legal. If they are refugees, they must be allowed to stay only until their country has returned to peace. (They too can join the queue to become legal while they wait.)

Many European governments have been generous in allowing in migrant workers and refugees. But they must look at these hard facts if they want to maintain a stable and peaceful society.

But that means reforming European societies, so they don’t need more immigrants to fill the growing number of vacant jobs, as people live longer and thus spend longer in retirement and need ever more social and medical care.  And jobs at the bottom in a material society become less interesting and are avoided whenever possible.

Increased automation and robotisation are absolutely necessary. Unions must educate their members to understand this.

Africa, Asia and Latin America, from whence migrants come, will come to realize that shut doors will help their societies. No longer will the young and ambitious (and often more educated) leave their countries. They are needed at home if their countries are to quickly develop.