In his 2009 book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe,
Christopher Caldwell outlines the issue of mass immigration into Europe from
the Muslim world. As European birthrates continue to drop following the Second
World War, in most countries dipping below level needed to maintain the current
population, the continent has turned to importing its labor force from poor and
conflict stricken nations.
Unlike pre-modern immigration to the United
States, these post-war immigrants to Europe come predominately from
non-Christian and non-European stock. Additionally, these immigrants were only
invited to Western Europe as a short term source of manpower. As none of the
host nations planned for the permanent settlement of migrant workers inside
their borders, their assimilation into society has proven unsuccessful. Roughly
a year after Caldwell’s book was published, German Chancellor Angela Merkel
declared that “this [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed.”
Caldwell quotes
Aristotle, stating that “a state cannot be constituted from any chance body of
persons, or in any chance period of time…. most of the states which have
admitted persons of another stock, either at the time of their foundation or
later, have been troubled by sedition.” Lack of assimilation among Europe’s
immigrant population who don’t share the same political or cultural values has
begun to cause backlash from the general European population, who have never
been ardent supporters of a multicultural society. Caldwell claims that
Europeans allowed the issue of foreign immigration to reach its current status
out of a sense of shame for the deeds committed by their nations over the past
several hundred years. Shame, as Caldwell points out, is only one of the
several and constantly shifting justifications for allowing immigration
provided by the European politicians. Common arguments preaching the necessity
of this immigration influx include supposed economic, cultural and moral rational.
Stuck between their unwillingness to fully accept the newcomers and their
inability to reject them has created a situation where “the world will mistake
their paralysis for hospitality.”
Throughout its
history, the United States has attracted immigrants from around the world.
Immigrants bring with them their cultures, customs and beliefs. Each successful
wave of people seeking a better life in the new world altered the regional and
national culture around the United States. Despite these changes in regional
demographics, most immigrant populations assimilated into the greater American
culture within a few generations. Immigrant families in the US were able to
find a place in the nation’s society and economy. Where situations of mass immigration occur,
the foreign-born population is generally made up of undereducated and
relatively unskilled people. This means that they typically occupy low paying
menial jobs in their new country. Immigrants to the United States would find
jobs in industrial factories or working on farms. From these positions of
unskilled labor, succeeding generations became more educated and assimilated
into society. However, as technology improved, many unskilled jobs became more
difficult to acquire. Caldwell references the unfortunate timing of the Great
Migration of African-Americans just as the number of unskilled positions in
northern industrial factories began to decline, leaving many unemployed without
a chance of building a future for their posterity.
Modern Europe
faces a similar trend of growing unemployment rates amongst its immigrant
population. The economic benefits once provided by imported labor are
diminishing while the cultural tensions appear to be growing. European cultural
identity is at risk under the pressure of changing demographics, causing populist
political parties garner support with their anti-immigration agendas.
