Immigration
into Europe
has to slow down
By
Jonathan
Power
April 24, 2002
LONDON - It is all too easy both to understate and to
overstate the results of the first round of the French
general election. To overstate is to forget that
Jean-Marie Le Pen achieved back in 1995 14% of the vote
as against his present 16.86%, hardly a mammoth increase.
He is still far behind the electoral pull of his Austrian
counterpart Jorg Haider and the peripheral position of
his National Front party gives it no chance of being a
critical element in supporting a government, as does its
Danish counterpart the Peoples Party.
Yet again is all too easy to understate the
significance of his victory over Lionel Jospin. Le Pen is
part of a marked trend in European politics. Admittedly
Haider seems to be losing support but in many countries
rightist candidates with an anti-immigrant tone and
policies that underline tough law and order themes are
still gaining ground.
Their significance is two fold. First, this is the
first time anti-immigrant movements spewing racist
rhetoric and tough cop solutions have been important
political forces in so many European countries at the
same time. Second, they do have something real to say
unlike their predecessors Enoch Powell in Britain and
James Schwartzenbach in Switzerland who in the 1960s and
70s earned a following by predicting awful things that
were going to happen if immigration was allowed to
continue at its then high levels.
The truth is awful things are now happening. Last year
it was race riots in Oldham in the old industrial
revolution heartland of England. This year it is the
burning of Jewish synagogues in Marseilles by Muslim
youths angry at the Israeli response to the Intifada. All
over Europe it is the undoubted rise of crime among
immigrant youth.
For its part, the "welcome" by the host community has
been at best unthought out and at worst simply vicious.
Right back in the 1950s and early 1960s when Third World
immigration first achieved significant proportions there
were too many reports of racist attacks by angry whites,
police brutality, job discrimination at every level
combined with an appalling general ignorance even by the
intelligensia of what was actually going on at the bottom
of the heap.
For example, there was a widespread assumption in the
1960s and 70s that immigrant crime rates were already
higher than average when in fact right across Europe they
were signicantly lower. There was also a too widespread
assumption that that these first generation immigrants
were attracted to Europe because of the access to welfare
payments when in fact they were under using such
facilities relative to the general population and they
only migrated when jobs were available. In Britain,
immigrants had a much higher rate of home ownership than
the indigenous working class.
Tragically over time many of these misconceptions
actually did become true. As the age profile changed and
as the first generation's children found their way
forward blocked by prejudice, poor education and
alienation from their own parents' humble but purposeful
lifestyles unemployment, welfare dependency and crime
began to climb. Despite these impediments, for a majority
of immigrants there has been a way through, material life
has become better and there has been significant
individual achievement. (Although not as much as
comparable immigrant groups in America. As General Colin
Powell, born of Jamaican immigrant parents, has observed,
in England he'd have risen to sergeant; in the U.S. he
became Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs.) Yet a too
large minority have missed the boat and stayed back,
estranged, seething, and in some cases prone to crime and
even violence.
We cannot close our eyes to what is happening today.
It is too socially simplistic to point to economics and
say we need immigrants to grease the wheels of the raw
underbelly of modern society, working in the low wage
economy, doing the difficult jobs at unsocial hours.
It is even more simplistic, as economists have often
done, to point to the anti-inflationary contribution of
the flow of new immigrants or to highlight the hypocrisy
of advanced capitalist societies who don't appear to
accept that free trade and free flows of capital be
balanced by the free flow of labour. Some are even
arguing that the immigrant gates should be opened wide
now that Europe has an ageing population and not enough
young tax payers to support the pensions of older people
with their dramatically extended longevity.
The trouble is economists don't usually live in tower
blocks next to dysfunctional immigrant families. Neither
do most politicians, academics nor journalists have their
children playing in glass-strewn streets with tough,
delinquent-inclined immigrant youth. Nor do they work on
the assembly line cheek by jowl with young immigrant men
who don't speak their language very well, who don't laugh
at their jokes and who eat and socialize in a manner that
is totally alien to their own traditions and
life-style.
Most people in most countries are not prepared to
change their cultural make up at the speed many Europeans
have been asked to the last three decades. Yes, the world
is becoming more cosmopolitan, but most of us still more
easily identify with our own kind. Finding that balance
is not easy.
Europe probably has to say no to further immigration
until it has digested properly what it has already
swallowed and make more effort to sort out its present
racial malaise. If it doesn't this 17 or 20% of the vote
will climb to 30% bringing right into centre stage the
ugliness of parties like Le Pen's, which at the moment,
for all the headlines, are still extremists out on the
political edge.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 By
JONATHAN POWER
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"Like
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