Sirach14:
Probably the same reason you don’t see many people leave America for another country. America is the land of opportunity, and plenty.
opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007519
This site requires a registration and the bugmenot site doesn’t log me in.
I’ve been thinking about these riots and about France. For me there is the motive of islamicisation and there is the motive of being fed up with exclusion.
These riots have originated in ‘the projects’ as you would say in the US. It appears that vast tracts of land in France have now been converted into highrise buildings to house people who are on welfare. It also appears that most of these people are immigrants or children of immigrants. It also appears that these people are capable of working but that there is no work or that whatever work there is does not filter through to them or is of menial nature.
Now yall have pointed out that France needed immigrants. Her birthrate was low and this was exascerbated by her abortion rate. Net result: fewer ethnic French. Solution: import people. It seems, as someone else pointed out, that many of these people have come from Africa, accepted because France is familiar with Africa – having had colonies there.
The deal appears to have been that immigrants must adopt the culture of the French which is secular; that is, they must accomplish the impossible task of looking like and behaving like ethnic French. Hence schoolgirls are forbidden from wearing the headscarf. Religion and culture of origin, therefore, become private, hidden. And the unexamined assumption is that any expression of religion or culture is not French and therefore not acceptable.
This it appears has translated into the workforce. So two people apply for a job. One guy is Jean-Pierre Leblanc and wears a suit. One guy is a girl; her name is Ismahan Ali and she wears the long aba. Both are electrical engineers. What the rioters have been saying is that Leblanc has been getting all the professional jobs and their own professionals have been relegated either to mopping factory floors or applying for welfare.
If this is true, then it is certainly understandable that people riot. If they are expected to shut up and take the discrimination, marginalization, and sheer grinding poverty in a land of plenty lying down, then they are going to explode. This is what happened in the American civil rights movement. Because many of the French rioters are also Muslim, the legitimate grounds of struggling for an equal place in the job market gets jumbled in with the illegitimate grounds of forcing Islam on a secular country.
Why has France not done the math?
If France needs engineers then she should accept immigrants who are engineers directly into engineering jobs. If there is no work for the people she is accepting, then it is the sheerest folly to accept them as immigrants. These folks have no personal investment in defending France; no reason to be thankful.
Canada thinks she is different. She is not. The only thing different is that immigrants are encouraged to express their culture of origin. In some places, they are encouraged to express their religion. In public housing it is forbidden to post religious symbols and this is illegal but it is still happening. But the reality on the ground is that the Canadian Family Compact is still alive and kicking: Ismahan Ali still gets beaten at the job game but this time it’s by someone called Simcoe.
We have the same vast tracts of public housing filled with unemployed immigrants. They get free health care so that they can be treated for depression. They get free recreational programs to give them an ‘outlet.’ They get food banks because welfare barely covers their rent. The official expecation here is that all of this is not only OK, it is humane.
We in Canada need to look at France really carefully before thinking we are immune. What has exascerbated the situation of the poor in Canada is that their elected officials have regularly misappropriated money – billions – which should have gone to creating jobs, opening hospitals and schools, and building affordable – not social – housing. We are very very vulnerable. People here will not stay down for very much longer.
