First Quarter

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.