Thread: French warns Europe of illegal immigrant dangers

"French minister warns Europe over illegal immigration
Sunday, October 1, 2006 at 07:05 EDT

MADRID — French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday warned European governments that failure to turn back a tide of clandestine immigrants could fuel an explosion of xenophobia in Europe.

His warning came on his arrival here to attend a meeting of ministers from eight countries to thrash out ways of tackling the crisis on the continent's borders, where illegal immigration has reached alarming proportions.

"The crisis confronting Europe is only beginning. If we decide not to act, we are going to give rise to xenophobic sentiments in our societies which we will not be able to control," Sarkozy told reporters.

He applauded the "courage" of Spain's attempts to repatriate thousands of mainly west African illegal immigrants and repeated his criticism of earlier amnesties, saying such moves only worsened the problem and fed xenophonia.

"The best solution is not to grant papers to everybody. Unfortunately France experimented with the mass granting of papers in 1997 and that led to an explosion in demands, four times more refugees," Sarkozy told reporters here.

Spain sees itself in the front line of the battle and is desperate for assistance to help cope with the huge wave of immigrants — 25,000 this year alone — currently overwhelming authorities in the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa.

Sarkozy is a right-wing French presidential hopeful and has already staked out a tough line on crime and immigration ahead of elections due in April.

He caused a stir here before his arrival when he criticized a decision by Spain to legalize 600,000 undocumented aliens last year.

Later during the meeting, Sarkozy called for a Europe-wide ban on mass amnesties for illegal immigrants and by warning of rising xenophobia in Europe if the influx if not turned back.

His views are shared by other countries like Germany and by Spain's opposition conservatives.

"When one country grants papers, it does so for itself but also for all the Schengen space. When someone is legalized in Spain they have the right to enter France," he told journalists.

Sarkozy's proposal was "well received" by the delegates, Spanish secretary of state for security, Antonio Camacho, said after the meeting.

Ministers from the eight countries — Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain — were joined at the talks here by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Ritva Viljanen, state secretary for the interior ministry from EU presidency holder Finland.

Franco Frattini and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European commissioners for justice and security and external relations respectively, were also present, as well as the director of Frontex, the EU's stretched external border agency.

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos opened the meeting with a call for "more solidarity and coherence" between EU states to deal with illegal immigration, calling it the "great challenge of the 21st century."

Spain's Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said that a concerted EU policy of repatriation was "fundamental."

The meeting ended with the delegates forming a joint proposal to reinforced cooperation between European states and manage the immigration influx off the southern coasts of Europe.

The proposal includes a European network of coastal patrols, monitoring close to the African coastlines. It will be presented to an informal European summit on Oct 20 in Finland."

http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/385894/all

Yeah, I was in Germany last week & they are complaining bitterly
about mass immigration. Exact same issues here: services +
failure to integrate. But my German friend doesn't plan to
have children & I wonder how they think negative population
growth is the answer.

I wonder how they think negative population
growth is the answer.

You've confused me. What is the question?

Yeah, I was in Germany last week & they are complaining bitterly
about mass immigration. Exact same issues here: services +
failure to integrate. But my German friend doesn't plan to
have children & I wonder how they think negative population
growth is the answer.

Legal immigration alone keeps us well above replacement level population growth. If all legal immigration into the United States were to cease, we would still be darn close to replacement levels.

You know that things are getting really bad
when France comes forward expressing
concern over an issue.

Erect the wall NOW!!!

This is what happens when the elite think they can control the view of the world, globalization and we are to be one happy, hand holding, sing along world!

The elite have no idea of human nature....they are just looking for the $$$.

It's a disgrace to see the mainstream American
media "celebrating the Latinization of America".

I grew up in Latin America and there is a reason
why they are the way they are.

I was going to submit this article in "Other Topics and Discussions" on Sunday, but it slipped my mind.

Being it is related to this thread, I will post it here, I found it quite disturbing.

Gallic intifada

By Arnaud de Borchgrave
October 16, 2006



BRUSSELS.
Turf-conscious bloggers in Paris' rundown, mostly Muslim, suburban immigrant housing estates rival in violent messages threatening to beat senseless and even kill any intruder caught in "our ghetto." Almost every word is misspelled, in both argot slang and pidgin French. These are not empty threats. An average of 14 policemen a day are injured in bloody clashes with jobless youths.
France's Interior Ministry said 2,500 police officers had been "wounded" this year. The head of the hard-line trade union "Action Police" Michel Thooris wrote to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to describe conditions in housing developments turned slums as "intifada." Police cruisers are pelted daily with stones and "Molotov cocktails" (gasoline-filled bottles with burning wicks that explode on impact) and Mr. Thooris said cops assigned to what was rapidly degenerating into "free fire zones" should be protected in armored vehicles. Entire tall buildings empty into the streets to chase police and free an arrested comrade.
"We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists," Mr. Thooris told journalists. Mr. Sarkozy, the leading center-right candidate for next year's presidential election, responded by dispatching cops in body armor, equipped with automatic weapons and rubber bullets, stun and teargas grenades into several Paris suburbs with orders to "restore control" from "organized crime." In one recent clash 250 cops dispersed a 100-strong Muslim gang armed with baseball bats.
The chaotic conditions in suburbs like Clichy-sous-Bois, Montfermeil and St. Denis have progressively worsened since the nationwide Muslim riots last November that torched 10,000 vehicles.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin recently criticized as "overdrawn" President Bush's frequent reference to the "global war on terror." But the Iraq war did not appear to be part of the combustible mix in Muslim "ghettos" outside Paris. Despair, organized crime, and hatred of authority are its principal ingredients.
For the United States, Islamist extremism is seen as an external problem. For the Europeans, it's internal and far more complex than a war on terrorism. Muslim minorities are spawning right-wing extremism. In the Belgian port city of Antwerp, a week ago, the Vlaams Belang (VB, or Flemish Interest), Europe's most extreme right-wing political formation, almost captured city hall with 33? percent of the vote. A Socialist coalition kept VB at bay with 35 percent. Nationwide, VB, which advocates secession of the Flanders and severe restrictions on Muslim immigration, scored 20 percent.
In France, Jean-Marie Le Pen's far right National Front (FN) appears to have opted for a can't-lick-'em-join-'em strategy, a rapprochement with France's large immigrant Muslim community -- with undertones of anti-Semitism. Mr. Le Pen's reasoning appears to be the recognition that Islamicization is in France to stay with 25 percent of France's under-20 population Muslim (40 percent in some cities), second- and third-generation North Africans.
FN's tough stance on immigration is tempered by support for Arab and Islamist causes in the Middle East (Hamas and Hezbollah are two favorites). There are an estimated 6 to 8 million Muslims among France's 62 million and Islam is now France's second religion. Mosques are well attended on Fridays; churches aren't on Sundays. More than 50 percent of France's prison inmates are Muslims.
Mr. Le Pen's strategic advisers argue the FN must drop its founding mythology and forget about the once-popular image of a modern Joan of Arc resisting the invasion of Muslim hordes. Americans and Jews are the new targets. But the party's Christian right-wingers do not agree and are defecting in large numbers. The Islamist threat is their main concern and they are finding a new political home in MPF, Mouvement Pour la France, which is anti-European Union and anti-Muslim and given only 7 percent of registered voters in a recent poll. Mr. Le Pen's followers have dropped back from 11 percent to 9 percent.
Anti-Semitic incidents have proliferated in France in recent times, but the news seldom makes it across the Atlantic and when it does, it must still fight to be heard above the constant melodrama of constant trivia. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse attacked with Molotov cocktails; in Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish soccer team with metal bars and sticks; a bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers attacked three times in the last 14 months; synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles and a Jewish school in Creteil firebombed in recent weeks; in Toulouse, a gunman opened fire -- all ignored in mainstream U.S. media.
The metropolitan Paris police tabulated 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents per day in the last 30 days throughout the country.

The No. 1 best-selling book in France is "September 11: The Frightening Fraud," which posits no plane ever crashed into the Pentagon. A similar book in Germany sold more than 1 million copies. One prominent Belgian businessman conceded privately, "No one knows what to believe anymore." Neither multiculturalism nor integration of Muslim communities seems to be working anywhere in Europe. Moderate Muslim voices cannot rise above radical hubbub.
The French far left has also gone fishing in these troubled Islamic waters. One new leftist political star is Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala, a hugely popular black comedian who appears to be a Gallic Louis Farrakhan. He dismisses civic educational programs about the Holocaust as "memory pornography." He was recently fined 5,000 Euros for comparing Jews to slave-traders. In a television sketch, he gave a Nazi salute while dressed as an orthodox Jew to denounce what he saw as "fascist Israeli policies."
The 40-year-old Dieudonne (he doesn't use his last name) was born in Paris to a French mother and Cameroonian father, and owns and runs a Paris theater that showcases young comedians. Sixty years ago, another French comedian decided to run for the presidency.
"Maisons Closes" had just been banned and Ferdinand Lop campaigned on reopening a brothel every five kilometers between Paris and Deauville. He got a handful of votes. Dieudonne's humor is black -- and dangerous.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.



http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/200 ... -5327r.htm