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Wednesday, August 31, 2005France's immigrant problem:Chirac Wants More Public Housing in FranceThis comes in response to three horrific fires in immigrant tenements. Forty-eight (48) African immigrants were killed in the fires. Crowding conditions in the tenements resembled Victorian England. Buildings weren't up to code. Etc.Unfortunately, what France really needs is coherent thought on the immigration issue. Fifty years ago, the first thing Algerian schoolchildren learned about in history was "Nos ancêtres, les Gauloises" - Our ancestors, the Gauls - the same way as any other children whose education was funded by the French government. That approach didn't turn out too well, but neither has the current one. Unless the French government can fit its immigrants into the French patrimony as well as the territory of France, these problems will persist as surely as wage slavery for Chinese and Koreans in the Bay Area. The whole of the West has gone on a multi-culti binge where we've simultaneously "celebrated" other cultures and let in more people than we were willing or able to admit into our own. The latest from Paris is sad and horrible, and it is in some measure France's problem. But it points to a larger problem the whole of the West faces, from Britain with its suicide bombers to Germany where Muslim girls have died in honor killings to the U.S. where we worry endlessly about the plight of illegals even as we force legal immigrants into the underground economy if their families' financial circumstances shift such that they need even a few bucks more than their families can send from home. If we don't have a space for immigrants to enter into our societies as full human beings, we shouldn't admit them. If it's unconscionable to turn them away, then we need to decide how much we're willing to give and give up to make space, from opening labor markets to making real provision for housing. But to pretend to admitting people to our societies only to hand them over to these subcultures where the West is across the street or down the block but still inaccessible... it's a blot on the Land of Opportunity, a blot on the devise, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, and an invitation to disaster for both the people allowed in on false premises and the societies that would host them. 
posted by gbarto at 11:19 AM |
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Day By Day© by Chris Muir.Old TurkeyBlog here.
