January 27, 2004
NORTH AFRICA:
France fails immigrants, says official study (Jon Henley, January 27, 2004, The Guardian)
France is failing miserably to assimilate immigrants, a government commission said yesterday, painting what it called a "morbid picture" of ghettos, soaring unemployment, inadequate education, sexual inequality and rising fundamentalism in a "socially and professionally disadvantaged" community.The High Council on Integration said in a damning report that an "enormous effort" was needed to assimilate adolescents of immigrant origin, who have been "abandoned" and constitute a "significant challenge for the republic".
The report comes as tensions mount over government plans to ban Islamic headscarves from schools, a move meant to protect France's strictly secular state, but which many fear will spark more resentment in its large Muslim community and hinder, rather than help, integration.
France no longer has a coherent culture of its own to assimilate immigrants into and is taking in the least assimilable of the lot anyway. But its rapid demographic decline and insistence on maintaining the welfare state means it has no choice but to keep bringing them in. It's a recipe for disaster.
MORE:
More people attend mosques than Church of England: Census (Nabanita Sircar, January 26, 2004, Hinustan Times)
More people in Britain attend mosques than the Church of England. It is for the first time that Muslims have overtaken Anglicans. According to figures 930,000 Muslims attend a place of worship at least once a week, whereas only 916,000 Anglicans do the same. Muslim leaders are now claiming that, given such a rise of Islam in Britain, Muslims should receive a share of the privileged status of the Church of England. [...]Posted by Orrin Judd at January 27, 2004 4:35 PMImmigration from Eastern Europe and conversions are believed to be adding to the number of Muslims. Lord Ahmad Patel, a Labour peer said 10 extra seats should be allocated to other religions. The Church of England has 26 seats in the House of Lords. However, the recent figures do not include Catholics. The Catholic church has 1.5 million British worshippers.
...Which is why they foster an environment of anti-Americanism as a "bread-and-circus" distraction from their own failings.
Posted by: MG at January 27, 2004 5:01 PMWhen I travelled through France in 1994 (from Germany where I was studying to the French coast to get a ferry to Ireland for break), I had an interesting experience I couldn't square at the time with what was popularly known.
I was at the ferry office to inquire about tickets and there were various people waiting as well. There was one black African (I knew because he had an African accent) who was complaining about how racist the French were (I think he got screwed on his ticket by the ferry company somehow). He knew the group I was with were not French and so he complained to us in English about all the problems he had. When he discovered we were Americans, he talked about how great the Americans were and that he never had any problems because of his race there.
It was very strange to witness this because the obvious implication was that France was more racist than the US. And while I was never filled with "white guilt," I do admit the US is working through this problem. However, the view is that other countries, especially Europe, was better in such relations than us. It was my first reality check that France had serious race/immigrant problems of its own, but simpyl couldn't admit it.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at January 27, 2004 6:04 PMA friend who was stationed at Bar le Duc in 1960-62 warned me that the trope about the French (and Europeans in general) being colorblind compared to Americans needed careful dissection.
A colorblind Virginian himself, he was and is a keen observer of how it works.
Anyhow, he said that while some Frenchwomen dated black GIs, those would never date white ones; and the ones who dated white Americans would never date of black one.
France was probably ahead of any other western country in assimilating non-French immigrants in the 19th and early 20th century.
If it isn't working now, you might consider whether the new kind if immigrant isn't at fault.
A lot of them don't want to assimilate and are vocal about it.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 27, 2004 6:09 PMI was under the impression that assimulation was a bad thing. It's multiculturalism and diversity that's politically correct.
Now I'm confused.
Posted by: erp at January 27, 2004 6:16 PMLike Dreyfus?
Posted by: oj at January 27, 2004 6:29 PMHail the Queen, Ayatollah of the Mosque of England?
Posted by: pj at January 27, 2004 6:31 PMDreyfus was a native Frenchman.
Up to around 1939, France was the exile of choice for, eg, your precious tsarists.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 27, 2004 9:02 PMNot very well assimilated were they? Of course, in WWII they handed their Jews to the Nazis.
Posted by: oj at January 27, 2004 9:45 PMFunny thing is, I wonder how the headline would read if the immigrants were not North African but say... Chinese?
Posted by: Ronnie at January 29, 2004 11:38 AMIs France failing immigrants? Or is the immigrant failing France?
Posted by: Ronnie at January 29, 2004 10:56 PMFrance is failing itself.
Posted by: oj at January 29, 2004 11:01 PM