The Islamization of Europe Multiculturalism Meets Reality

Mike Scruggs

Several years ago, the late Milton Friedman, American champion of economic freedom, remarked that combining high levels of social-welfare payments and open-door immigration policies would inevitably lead to national bankruptcy. This was an observation of plain common sense. No one needs a doctorate in economics to understand that, in an impoverished world, high welfare payments and easy immigration lead to unsustainable levels of government spending followed by either grinding levels of taxation or inflationary debt, usually both. Either welfarism or uncontrolled immigration can ruin a nation in a few short decades, but in combination, they are a sure bet for national disintegration.

Once bad economic and social policies become entrenched, dependent political constituencies make necessary nation-saving changes extremely difficult. to enact. We see this every day in Congress and state legislatures. We see it on the nightly news as unions demonstrate, strike, bully, and threaten violence in Greece, France, and Wisconsin. Across the country, we see illegal aliens boldly demonstrating against enforcement of immigration laws and demanding amnesty.

The same combination of bad policies is ruining many European Union (EU) nations, and in a few of them, the fifth column of immigrant and allied political strength has rendered any native resistance extraordinarily difficult or even criminal. This is particularly true where new “hate speech” laws have been enacted. In Sweden, Belgium, and the UK, any criticism of Islam, including use of unfavorable statistics on Muslim crime or welfare, is subject to prosecution. In Belgium, the Socialist Party was even able to ban and muzzle their conservative competition for a while. The two largest Flemish parties, the New Flemish Alliance and Vlaams Belang, oppose multiculturalism, want to restrict immigration, and are now advocating Flemish secession from Belgium.

Yet even in some of the most liberal EU nations, some alarming statistics are breaking through the suppression of speech and information. The discovery that 40 percent of Denmark’s welfare budget was spent on a Muslim population of only four percent turned Denmark to more conservative government and strict immigration control. The revelation that that the non-Western five percent of the Swedish population was receiving half of Sweden’s welfare budget has at least awakened Sweden to the reality of Milton Friedman’s observation that open-door immigration would inevitably bankrupt and destroy a welfare state.

Norway is fortunate in having considerable petroleum reserves off its western coast. Revenue from a National Petroleum Fund has been a substantial boon to supporting Norway’s welfare budget. Since 2006, however, the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO) has been warning that immigrant welfare use is so high that the National Petroleum Fund may be depleted within a few years. Unless Norway changes its immigration policies, Norway’s non-Western immigrant population of about three percent will quadruple by 2015. At the same time, Norway’s declining birth rate, now averaging only 1.8 children per couple, will result in a seven percent reduction in the workforce. Norway’s non-Western immigrant population is heavily concentrated in Oslo, where 55 percent of the welfare budget goes to that population group. The largest part of these are Pakistanis. In the last seven years, Pakistan’s population has increased by 30 million, over six times the entire population of Norway. Although conservative resistance is growing in Norway, the Left-Green coalition has dominated the Norwegian Parliament since 2005.

Assimilation has been the great hope of high immigration enthusiasts in both the United States and the European Union nations. It has not worked recently in the U.S. and has now been recognized as a disaster in many EU nations. Recently, the chiefs of state of Germany, France, and the UK declared multiculturalism to be an unmitigated failure. In fact, assimilation of Muslim populations in Europe is going the other way. Young European-born Muslims in the EU have far stronger loyalties to Islam and their grandparents’ homeland than their grandparents and have little identification with European nationality or culture. This is especially pronounced among young Muslim women.

In the Netherlands, a majority of young Muslims consider Islam and their grandparents homeland their chief loyalties. An alarming Daily Telegraph poll of British Muslims indicated that 40 percent of them want to introduce Sharia Law into British courts. Twenty percent are willing to admit sympathy with terrorists. One in three German Muslim youth want Islam to be the national religion of every country, and the same number were prepared to use violence against non-Muslims to serve the Muslim community. Over half said that Muslims should not adapt to Western society.

The Islamization of Europe first began with hiring Turkish, Yugoslav, and Moroccan guest-workers in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium. When these largely low-skilled and poorly educated workers were no longer needed, they did not go home. They stayed to become an increasing welfare burden. Sweden’s welfare-state politicians realized that Sweden’s 1.75 births per family could not sustain its native population. They thought immigrant taxpayers would save the Swedish welfare state. But the refugees they welcomed were predominantly low-skilled and poorly educated. Rather than generating the taxes to pay for the Swedish welfare-state, the net result was vastly increased welfare dependence and spending and a startling increase in crime.

A common sociological and logical error made by politicians and naïve voters in Europe and America is the belief that bringing in large numbers of unskilled and poorly educated guest-workers, immigrants, and refugees will sustain a nation’s ability to finance its welfare and retirement systems. This never works. Large numbers of low-skilled and poorly educated workers are almost always a net economic burden. National economic health requires improved skills, better education, and clear thinking.