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Chirol
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Chirol

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November 7th, 2005

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Whose Responsibility?

With the French riots embarassingly raging on, and the many possible causes of them being discussed left and right, one interesting question does arise: What responsibility should a country have to its minorities? France was a colonial power who conquered, among other places, North Africa, a region from which most of its muslim population comes. Thus, in a sense, the French owe them the ability to move to France and hopefully have a better life. Yet, in other countries, with no such past, like Germany, one also finds a few million muslims (though better integrated). Morally, France should have a much bigger obligation to its Muslim community than Germany.

So theoretically, if the same thing happened in Germany, could we blame the government for not having integrated people enough? In this case, it would clearly be the burden of the immigrants, not the country, whereas in France the responsibility lies on both sides. What responsibility does a government have to its immigrants and vice versa? Should it depend on the country’s history, such as in France or England’s case? Readers?

Comments to this entry

Dan
November 7, 2005
7:29 pm
While Berlin might escape responsibility for lack of positive reinforcement (low job creation), she still deserves blame for detering people from working (through generous welfare payments). Similar actions by Washington destroyed the black family and reduced black employment rates to higher than whites to lower.
davesgonechina
November 7, 2005
11:21 pm
A commentary in the Wall Street Journal seems to lay alot of responsibility on France's economic system and refusal to deal with its ethnic divisions.
phil
November 8, 2005
1:17 am
"What responsibility should a country have to its minorities?"

The same responsibility it has to all its citizens. Equality means that there are no special responsibilities. Responsibility is distributed equally among the citizenry.

"France was a colonial power who conquered, among other places, North Africa, a region from which most of its muslim population comes. Thus, in a sense, the French owe them the ability to move to France..."

The Turks also conquered North Africa do they owe them the ability to move to Turkey? The Mongols conquered a vast piece of land in Asia, does that mean that the nation of Mongolia owes every human being that now exists in what was the Mongolian empire the ability to move to Mongolia? What is the statute of limitations on this? Does Macedonia owe the people of Afghanistan the ability to move to Macedonia?

"Yet, in other countries, with no such past, like Germany..."

How about South West Africa? Does Germany have an obligation to have a completely open immigration policy towards Namibia?

"...could we blame the government for not having integrated people enough?"

Governments can't just "integrate " people. People have to be willing to transcend their particular identities. Muslims in Europe are like Terrell Owens in Philly. TO is all about himself not about the team. Muslims in Europe (some of them at least, not all) are also about themselves and not about the society they have willingly joined. However, to the extent that the French gov't has created an artificial unemployment problem as a direct result of its stifling of entrepreneurship and economic liberty and thus have basically condemned these minority youths to a life of frustration, destined to waste their potential on welfare instead of contributing their intelligence and talents to human advancement, resulting in a susceptibility to Islamist radicalism, then yes, we can blame the French gov't.

"whereas in France the responsibility lies on both sides"

Yes indeed.
lirelou
November 8, 2005
3:19 am
Amen to Phil's comment. France did more than conquer North Africa, it built nations there. We can laugh about the quaint ring of "mission civilizatrice", but the French did their very best to lay the infrastructure of what could have been modern states prior to the second world war. The French do deserve some of the blame for their post-war obstinacy in refusing to recognize that the days of paternal colonialism were over, and indeed the heroic performance of the "Armee d'Afrique" (North African Army) from Italy, across France, to Austria, helped usher in that end. They imprisoned moderate nationalists, and made radical nationalism the only alternative solution in Algeria. But, the North Africans wanted independence, and they got it. The fact that their states failed them cannot be laid at France's feet. The civilization that failed them is their own. France DOES owe the Harkis, and Algerian French Army war veterans, a place in France. But everyone else should be considered a conditioned immigrant. Their right to reside in France must be contingent upon their accepting to become French, and respecting French law and society, which includes a secular education. The government, for its part, should begin a public service campaign to remind non-Muslims that those Muslims intent upon adopting French language and customs as their own are deserving of respect.

Napoleon was correct in his judgment that a "whiff" of grapeshot against the Paris mob would restore civil order and, in the long run, cause fewer casualties. Perhaps it's time for interlocking bands of machinegun fire and the judicious use of snipers. Otherwise the only winners in these riots will be far-right parties like Le Pen's. Those who don't like being French can do France the courtesy of getting the hell out.
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Al Qaeda’s New Front
November 8, 2005
6:21 am
[...] Chirol asks who or what is responsible for the rage that has been unleashed on the streets of cities across Europe, in France, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Sweden and Belgium. A great explainer can be seen online on this PBS Frontline documentary, which came out this past summer. [...]
Chirol
November 8, 2005
11:01 am
Phil: You're misunderstanding that statement. Naturally the government has the same legal responsibility towards minorities, afterall, citizens are citizens. My question was should the government do anything extra to help integrated immigrants and their children? Or is that solely the job of the immigrant? That was the question. And from there, I wondered whether countries that colonized others had more responsibility towards people from that colony who moved to the "mother land" than people who just move to a random country.

Obviously, most of the burden is that of the immigrants for it is he who's made the decision and thus must accept the culture and traditions of his new home, not vice versa. The question is whether France should keep allowing those from former colonies in at all. Does France owe them more than a random immigrant from country X?

And to what extent should countries allow immigration. On one hand, there are various parts of international law which note countries must accept asylum seekers and so forth (can't find the exact law at the moment) but at the end of the day, the government answers to its own people, not to foreigners. Should, for example, only people with degrees be allowed to immigrate, or those who are reasonably educated?

Though the poor and uneducated tend to make up most immigrants, they also often bring the least to their host country. Sure there are some exceptions like Mexicans in the US, but uneducated Turks bring little to Germany, whereas the hordes of foreigners who come to the US, either with a degree, or getting one, do a lot more for our society and economy and are the last ones who will be causing social problems.
phil
November 8, 2005
12:49 pm
Chirol, You're right I misunderstood what you were saying. Yes, immigrants often need assistance transitioning from their home country to their new country. Obviously the kind and degree of assistance will vary from individual to individual. An immigrant from India with a degree in engineering is going to need less assistance than say Hmong immigrant from Laos who is coming from a pre-modern tribal culture. I think a combination of public-private assistance is best, limited of course, with the understanding that the immigrant has the responsibility to achieve self-sufficiency. The gov't role should probably be limited to that of an intermediary between the immigrant and some private sponsor if one is needed.

"Should, for example, only people with degrees be allowed to immigrate, or those who are reasonably educated?"

There is nothing wrong with countries setting criteria for immigrants. Countries may need people with certain skills or maybe they want people who are more likely to fit in with their culture. For example the Europeans should be recruiting immigrants from Latin America rather than Muslim countries. Latinos are Christian, speak a European language, and come from countries with European-derived cultures.

There is also nothing wrong with letting the poor and uneducated immigrate if you have a dynamic economy. They are often very entrepreneurial and eager for an opportunity to improve themselves. In one of Thomas Sowell's books he writes about how in the late 1800s and early 1900s eastern European Jews were some of the most destitute immigrants to arrive on our shores. And he references a study that went back and looked at New York public library check-out cards and found that these immigrants had the highest rate of library check-outs compared to other groups who were not as poor. And within a couple of generations the descendents of these tend to be very successful and well educated.

But in a country like France which does not have a dynamic economy they may not be able to offer the opportunity of social mobility for succeeding generations.
Chirol
November 8, 2005
12:55 pm
Phil: Then we're on the same page. Your suggestion that Europeans should rather recruit from south America is indeed an enticing idea. Yet, I believe immigration has more to do with geography. As far as I know, Spain has a reasonable amount of south American immigrants, but it's much harder to get from Guatamala or Mexico to Spain than to America.

I'm going to run that idea by German friends and see what they think.
phil
November 8, 2005
3:24 pm
Virginia Postrel has a post commenting on an article in the IHT that is relevent to our discussion on integrating immigrants. Here's an excerpt from the IHT article:

Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and other Easterners are arriving at an average rate of 16,000 a month, a result of Britain's decision to allow unlimited access to the citizens of the eight East European countries that joined the EU last year.
They work as bus drivers, farmhands and dentists, as waitresses, builders, and saleswomen; they are transforming parts of London into Slavic and Baltic enclaves where pickles and Polish beer are stacked in delicatessens and Polish can be heard on the streets almost as often as English.
But the doomsayers were also wrong: Multicultural Britain has absorbed these workers like a sponge. Unemployment is still rock-bottom at 4.7 percent, and economic growth continues apace.
Since May 2004, more than 230,000 East Europeans have registered to work in Britain, many more than the government expected, in what is shaping up to be one of the great migrations of recent decades.
Yet the government says it still has shortages of 600,000 workers in fields like nursing and construction.
"They are coming in and making a very good reputation as highly skilled, highly motivated workers," said Christopher Thompson, a diplomat at the British Embassy in Warsaw. "The U.K. is pleased with the way it's progressed over the first 16 months, and we're confident it will be a beneficial relationship for both sides in the future."
Tens of thousands of East Europeans have also moved to Ireland and Sweden, the only other West European countries that opened their labor markets to the new EU members.
With nearly full employment, Ireland's booming economy still needs workers, and immigration is actively encouraged. More than 128,000 East Europeans from the new EU member states registered to work in Ireland from May 2004 to August this year.
Irish society seems to be adjusting to the newcomers, 45,000 of whom come from Poland. A newspaper in Limerick now runs a column in Polish; last summer the national bus company began a daily service from Dublin to Warsaw.
[Snip]
...a Pole seeking to work in France, for example, still needs to apply for a work permit. France issued 737 such permits to Poles in the 10 months after enlargement; that is the number of Poles who arrive in Britain every two days.
Poles who go to Britain, in contrast, do not need any special permission.
In fact, Britain is so eager to recruit more Poles, by far the largest group of entrants since May last year, that British embassy officials in Warsaw have distributed brochures at Polish unemployment offices "so that if people wanted to go to the United Kingdom they had good information," Thompson said.

http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/archives/001929.html
Chirol
November 8, 2005
4:13 pm
Fabulous find and very relevant. A more flexible economy creates more jobs and thus more demand for them drawing talent from abroad. This is a large part of what has made the US so competitive and successful. Seems that evil "neo-liberal" Anglo-Saxon model may not be so bad after all. The Brits/Irish get it!