The main reason behind mass migration from Asia and Africa to Europe is that its gentle laws virtually invite migrants to come and live at the expense of European taxpayers. While the democratization promoted with the help of air strikes does not seem to lead the freshly liberated nations to take care of their own countries' future, it clearly prompts refugees to knock on the doors of other nations' homes. Some time before the unrest erupted in Tunisia and other Arab countries, British premier David Cameron admitted the collapse of multiculturalism, thus recognizing — on Europe's highest level, importantly — that former Deutsche Bank Executive Board member and senator for finance of the state of Berlin Thilo Sarrazin was right when he blamed the failure to integrate Muslims into the German society on the culture of Islam. Sarrazin holds that Muslims, being the single largest immigrant community, are also the least successful group in terms of getting built into the society within which they live and that they therefore pose a direct threat to Germany's future. Sarrazin also stresses that Germany's problems are limited to the group of some 5-8 million immigrants from Muslim countries, while no problems arise in connection with immigrants from East Europe, India or Vietnam, and that supporting the Muslim community imposes a heavy burden on Germany's welfare system while the community's feedback to the German budget is minimal. As a staunch defender of Sarrazin and Germany's former education minister Klaus von Dohnanyi argues, there is no way to deny that, exactly as Sarrazin says, the number of welfare recipients in Germany grows steadily due to the high birth rate among the Muslim community, and the process has an adverse impact on the efficiency of the society as a whole.
Truly speaking, Sarrazin neither attacked Islam as a religion nor criticized all of Germany's Muslims indiscriminately — his invectives target exclusively the part of the Muslim community which avoids getting integrated into the German society and remains unenthusiastic about learning the German language or generally interacting with the German educational system. While Germany's greens responded to attempts to introduce mandatory courses of German for Muslim migrants by screaming about enforced Germanization, the impression is that the majority of Muslim migrants indeed expect that the society will hand them the welfare and leave them alone. As a result, Germanyfinds itself hosting parallel societies with traditions and lifestyles alien to most Germans, and the goodwill of the German society which must be credited with accepting and supporting immigrants is not enough to solve the problem.
Opinion polls showed that 62% of Germans sided with Sarrazin on the immigrants issue, which indirectly proves that his assessment of the situation is adequate. Moreover, 18% of those polled said they would immediately join Sarrazin's party should he establish one. Rebellions in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, and Libya broke out in just a couple of months after the survey was conducted. The West is pursuing its own interests in the region where it is installing puppet regimes and securing a grip on the energy resources, politics, and markets, but for Europe the gains come with a cost as the EU is facing a new tide of immigration.
Lampedusa is an Italian island located some 100 km away from Tunisia's coast. Under public pressure, two years ago the Italian government signed an agreement with Libya's Gadhafi and Tunisia's Ben Ali to immediately deport refugees from the two countries, and the inflow of illegal immigrants dropped sharply thereafter. The statistics supplied by the UN Refugee Agency reflected the arrival of 36,000 refugees to Italy in 2008 but only 9,573 in 2009 and 4,348 — in 2010. Some three months ago the situation remained more or less under control, but the rebellions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya exposed the EU to the risk of an unprecedented immigrant onslaught. Lampedusa was the first to absorb the shock — over the past three months it had to receive thousands of illegal immigrants who evidently cannot be deported under the current circumstances. Lampedusa mayor Bernardino De Rubeis requested assistance from the government citing urgent public security regards, as cases of robbery and vandalism had been reported and some of the «visitors» from Africa whose identities were impossible to verify could be terrorists or other criminals. The police clashed with refugees in Lampedusa, and the island whose capacities are supposed to give shelter to at most 800 people cannot cope with their inflow.
In contrast to the previous waves of immigration which reached Lampedusa, the one the island is dealing with at the moment consists of people aggressively pressing their demands.They are not asking to be received, but rather act as if they are entitled to being where they are. Mayor De Rubeis was slammed for inciting hate based on race when he explicitly disallowed begging and unauthorized camping in public places. Leader of the French right Marine Le Pen who visited Lampedusa and was joined by De Rubeis at the airport was confronted by activists chanting slogans like «This is a colored world!» and «Marine Le Pen, we don't want you here!». She replied that she also had a heart and was overwhelmed by compassion but it was still impossible to admit everybody. The Italian government attempted to scatter the migrants across several refugee camps and requested assistance from the EU to handle what appears to be Europe's common problem. Italy's foreign minister Franco Frattini said the EU was unprepared to pick up the challenge and did nothing to prevent the crisis. Eventually S. Berlusconi personally headed for Lampedusa to help shift the illegal immigrants around. The European countries rejected the idea to distribute the migrants over the EU to give a break to Lampedusa where at the moment natives are outnumbered by immigrants. Germany's minister of the interior Thomas de Maiziere bluntly said his country already absorbed enough refugees and was unable to solve the whole world's problems, adding that the situation in Italy was a challenge but still not a shock. It quickly transpired that in 2010 Germany sheltered 48,000 and Sweden — 30,000 refugees, roughly a factor of five more than Italy. German deputy minister of the interior Ole Schröder said that the best thing Europe can do for the people is to assist Africa in stabilizing its socioeconomic settings, while softening the border regulations is not an option.
Italyis asking the European Commission for Euro 100m to fund the first round of measures supposed to improve the immigrants current living conditions. Fortex, Europe's agency responsible for coastline patrol, tightened the regime along the entire Mediterranean coast. The Italian government and the EU law-enforcement agencies are monitoring the developments on Italy's southern frontier and thinking how — upon rendering the first aid — to ping-pong the immigrants back to where they belong. It is nevertheless clear that the efforts will neither tone down the problem of illegal immigration from Africa to the EU nor spare Italy the human rights watchdogs' outcry over alleged violations of the regulations concerning the political asylums. As prescribed by the 1992 Helsinki treaty, protecting the rights of refugees and displaced persons must be on top of the list of CSCE countries' priorities, regardless of the fact that the number of refugees rose tenfold since the agreement was penned.
The surge of illegal immigration makes the EU chose between «the human rights» and social stability. For Europe, the much-cheered change of the «dictatorial regimes» echoes with the advent of mobs of citizens of the «now-democratic» republics who are eager to eat into the European countries' budgets.
Residents of Lampedusa blocked the island's bay inlet to debar more boats carrying immigrants from coming in. Immigrants in Lampedusa do what they can to get food which is already in short supply. Hundreds of them are rallying at the seaport, shouting that they only demand elementary things like beds but are held in intolerable conditions and treated as criminals, which, by the way, they are from the standpoint of the Italian law after illegally entering the country's territory.
This year, over 15,000 of immigrants from North Africa landed in Lampedusa. Italy's premier pledged to get all of them out of the island, but in any case for Italy — and for the rest of Europe - Lampedusa is forever. The African crisis set in motion by France was bred by the policies of the Western countries which build their welfare systems as if they hope to somehow remain unaffected by the developments they provoke in Africa, seemingly far away from their own territories.
The illegal immigrants who — without any sense of gratitude - nab parts of the social pie in the countries they penetrate will always be a headache to the original populations at whose expense the EU is going to offset the drawbacks of its foreign politics escapades. The fighting and clashes with police in Leicester, Great Britain, during the right radicals' recent march against immigration can only be attributed to the protesters' narrow vision. Their problem is not that they have to coexist with Asian or other communities but that their own government worries about the newcomers from South Asia, Africa, India, and China more than about the country's native citizens.
Why do the West's governments serially provoke Lampedusas? The explanation is that the immigrants are the government's failsafe support base, the people who would not mind voting for the current administrations daily. As reported by Hamburger Abendblatt, German Institute for Economic Research director Klaus Zimmermann maintains that Germany needs to bring in 500,000 immigrants a year to keep its economy healthy, or else in some five years workforce shortages await the country where 250,000 people retire annually. I could tell Mr. Zimmermann right away where to get workforce in sufficient numbers for the coming 15 years or so: at the moment 3.01 people in Germany are unemployed. They might need re-training or assistance in relocating, but in any case they are already there, not on the way to Lampedusa. Simply the government would have to recall which nation's interests it nominally espouses.
