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May 07, 2007
Immigration Plays Central Role in French Elections
Eighteen months ago "youths" in the suburbs that surround Paris and many other French cities began engaging in "civil unrest" that included the wholesale torching of automobiles, the smashing of shop windows, the trashing of churches and synagogues, and the occasional murder. After the initial all-out assault on the French motor pool in late 2005, the "youths" have scaled back their plan to eradicate the Peugeot and Renault and have reduced their car burning activities to a more tolerable (by French standards) level of a few a night.
The "youths," it is widely reported, are angry and alienated owing to high unemployment stemming from rigid French regulations that make hiring a new worker about as onerous and fraught with obligations as adopting a child. What has been largely ignored by the media, however, is that the unhappy youths who have turned many French neighborhoods into no-go zones for le flics tend not to be named Jean-Claude, Jean-Pierre, or Jean-Louis, but rather Mohammed, Ahmed, or Khalid.
The victory of Nikolas Sarkozy in yesterday's election was an acknowledgement of France's immigration crisis that in some ways is at a more advanced stage than our own. From an issue that was dominated just a few years ago by the fringe Nationalist Party headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen, dealing with the consequences of irresponsible immigration policies in France has gone mainstream. In the latest French election, Sarkozy linked immigration and large unassimilated immigrant populations with the country's economic and social welfare crises.
To be sure, there are many differences between the situation in France and that of the United States, but there are still lessons to be drawn from what is happening there. The United States does not have the Byzantine business regulations that stifle economic growth, an extravagant cradle-to-grave social welfare system, labor laws that discourage workers from working, or an anemic below replacement level fertility rate.
What we do have in common with France is a growing socially, linguistically, culturally and economically alienated immigrant population. Even more importantly, with the exception of language, the gap between the children of the immigrants and the rest of the population is growing wider. Instead of antagonism toward the host society whipped up by radical clerics in France and elsewhere in Europe, second generation immigrants in the U.S. are taught resentment of America by ethnic identity groups and multiculturalists. Instead of being part of a demographic push to restore to Allah a Europe that is rightfully His, second generation immigrant youth march with Mexican flags and speak of reclaiming territory that is rightfully theirs. While cars in American cities are not yet turned into Roman Candles on a nightly basis, there are parts of many American cities that are now off limits to members of other ethnic or racial groups, and where even police are reluctant to venture.
In France Sarkozy campaigned on a pledge to retake control of regions of the country now under control of the "youths". The "youths," for their part, have promised more "civil unrest" should Sarkozy be elected. Given France's proclivity for quick surrender the outcome of such a showdown remains in doubt. What is clear is that the United States and other Western democracies had better watch very closely what happens in France, because they will soon be dealing with it themselves.
Posted on at May 7, 2007 02:53 PM