How Can Immigrants Be Absorbed?

Immigration is not new for Europe. The first migrants who arrived from the Middle East (Homo Sapiens) wiped out the Neanderthals, another human species that had lived there for 200,000 years.

Germanic tribes and Huns from Central Asia infiltrated and ultimately destroyed the Western Roman Empire (300-400 AD). The Romans had managed to keep them out for a thousand years, but ultimately collapsed under the crush of their numbers and their military force.

The local Britons were overwhelmed during the 5th to 7th centuries AD with a relentless migration of Angles and Saxons, Germanic tribes pushed out of the continent by more barbarians coming in from the East. By their sheer numbers, they took over England, pushing the natives to the fringes.

Viking pirates raided England, Ireland, and France during the 8th and 9th centuries, but ultimately came to stay, replacing local rulers with their own. Normandy in France was an example of Norse takeover. Because the invaders were mostly males, they took local women as wives---women who saved their native culture and languages. Normandy became a French dukedom.

Migration in antiquity succeeded only when immigrants came with numbers and the host country was in a weakened state. This process was evident in the European migrations to the New World as colonial powers. They overwhelmed the natives who were not only less technologically developed, but were vulnerable to European diseases. It was no contest.

The chaos of the 20th century, collapsing empires, religious persecution (Armenians, Jews, Arab Christians, and minority Muslim sects) set millions of people fleeing their ancestral homes. Most were eventually resettled, being absorbed and taking on lives compatible with their hosts.

The newest refugees fleeing countries that are badly governed, in the grip of civil conflicts, or living with the consequences of climate change and gross overpopulation (sub-Saharan Africa), most of them Muslim, are the latest hordes seeking refuge in Europe, Canada, and the US.
They do not find permanent refuge with their more prosperous Muslim neighbors. Jordan once granted citizenship to Palestinian refugees, but no longer. The rest certainly do not. Nor, with the exception of Jordan and maybe Lebanon, are legitimate refugees from Syria and Iraq given temporary refuge.

Europe is facing this onslaught right now. The desperate migrants include mostly middle class, secular Syrians fleeing civil war; long-time refugees from the still tumultuous and unsafe Iraq and Afghan wars; and economic and climate change refugees from Africa, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

Syrians can be absorbed by European countries such as Germany with a declining population. Those who are either Christian or secular Muslim with middle class and professional skills should survive well in their new homes. The rest are a problem that Europe has already experienced. Under the idealistic (and mistaken) notion of multiculturalism, little attempt was made to compel immigrants to adopt European culture. They were permitted to adhere to their own cultures until the consequences of this became apparent.

European countries are experiencing explosions of rape (Sweden?s Somalis); wife and child abuse, including "honor killings" (Pakistani and Afghan); and female genital mutilation (Africans). Add to this the recruitment of Muslim youth into criminal gangs (in France and Britain) and lately, recruitment into murderous Muslim cults, such as ISIS. These cults advocate organized and lone-wolf attacks on their host countries, which we saw last year in France and before that, in Spain and Britain. Only belated vigilance has prevented more such attacks in Europe.

New refugees are pouring into Europe and the EU is trying to uphold their laudable principles of giving refuge to any fleeing death or persecution. Germany, which has been welcoming to migrants, well beyond the rest of European countries, is already finding Muslim thugs beating and raping Christians and Yazidis in refugee camps. Hospitals are also being overwhelmed by patients who respect no authority and beat women doctors. Germany?s spate of "honor killings" continues.

Elsewhere in the world (Japan, Angola, Hungary), countries are refusing Muslim immigration. In Europe, some countries are deporting Muslim criminals (Norway, Denmark) and find that their national crime rate is plummeting.

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Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of God's Law or Man's Law. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.