| Submit your comments on this article | ||
| Europe | ||
| Islam on the Outskirts of the Welfare State | ||
| 2006-02-05 | ||
The second consequence was logistical. At a time when all of Europe's infrastructure needed to be rebuilt or replaced, Sweden had one of the few undemolished industrial bases on the continent. In retrospect, its astonishing postwar growth rates — 4 percent a year until the oil crisis of the 1970's and 7 percent for most of the 1960's — were almost inevitable. All Sweden lacked was sufficient people to man its factories. A result was a series of temporary labor agreements with foreign countries along the lines of Germany's Gastarbeiter program .... When the boom stopped all over the West in the 1970's, labor unions sought — and got — restrictions on work-force migration. But one door was left open: political asylum. Polish Jews fleeing state anti-Semitism and Greeks fleeing the dictatorship of the "colonels" began arriving in the late 1960's, and Swedish immigration since then forms — to use a metaphor of the economist Torsten Persson — "a ringlike pattern of political crises," from pro-Allende Chileans in the 1970's through Kurdish nationalists in the 1980's to Somalis and Bosnians in the 1990's. So began the "sudden" phase of the emergence of multiethnic Sweden. Since 1980, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, half of all residence permits granted — almost 400,000 — have gone to reunite families from various geopolitical disaster areas. A lot of these places were in the Islamic world. So Sweden now has a Muslim population of 200,000 to 400,000; the higher tally would place it among the most heavily Muslim countries in Western Europe.... Sweden suffered from bad decisions and bad timing. In 1985, it shifted responsibility for integrating immigrants from its employment bureaucracy to its welfare system. Then, between 1990 and 1994, squeezed between an expanding state sector and increasing global competition for its industries, Sweden underwent the worst economic collapse of any Western European economy in decades. G.N.P. contracted by 6 percent, and employment levels declined by 12 percent. This was the moment (1992) when asylum applications were reaching a peak of 84,000 a year — to a country of only 9 million. The vast majority were accepted. That is, before family reunification is even reckoned in, Sweden was adding almost 1 percent a year to its population by welcoming some of the most desperate and traumatized people on earth.
| ||
| Posted by:lotp |
| #10 Bull. Most USA Muslims immigrants have jobs---good ones usually. Are they any less Islamakazi than Euro Muslims immigrants? You're referring to the cartoon riots in Dearborn, Mr. G? Apparently, our Muslim immigrants are "less Islamakazi than Euro Muslims immigrants." Next question? |
| Posted by: Wuzzalib 2006-02-05 21:24 |
| #9 Bull. Most USA Muslims immigrants have jobs---good ones usually. Are they any less Islamakazi than Euro Muslims immigrants? |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2006-02-05 20:22 |
| #8 My mother's family in Germany traces back to the High Middle Ages, yet to the Germans they were always nothing but foreign Jews. The village we lived in during the 1990s celebrated its 800th anniversary while we were there... and many of the founding names were still listed on the tax rolls. In Switzerland anyone from the next village over, not even the next canton, is a foreigner, and therefore mistrusted. They do like their little games over there. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-02-05 14:02 |
| #7 But Europe won't ever let its immigrants assimilate. Steve, wot about these Critters? Greeks, Normans, Vikings, Visigoths, Anglos, Romans, Saxons, Carthaginians, Moors, Slavic plps, Mongols and the NFL Berserkers? |
| Posted by: RD 2006-02-05 12:56 |
| #6 Huh? The Mormons didn't end up in Utah because of the scenery. They were violently driven out of many towns in the east because of their peculiarities. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-02-05 12:45 |
| #5 I agree with Robin that we need to understand this, and I'm a bit surprised that the NYT presents the article the way it does -- no fawning over the wonderful, egalitarian, multi-cultural Swedes, but rather almost a straight-up piece of reporting. It's another example of the key difference between Europe and America. In America one can assimilate completely. You can have parents or grandparents from anywhere and be an authentic American. We all drink on St. Patricks Day, feast on Cinco de Mayo day, and Kwanzaa is just another excuse to eat. But Europe won't ever let its immigrants assimilate. I wonder if it goes all the way back to Roman and pre-Roman times when waves of immigrants swarmed in from Asia. That east-to-west story was repeated many times over a couple of millenia, and I think it's part of the European subconscious -- outsiders are bad, outsiders are eventually going to take everything we have, we'd better not let them get too cozy here. I have friends in Germany (as a number of R'burgers do), and it's interesting how, while they appreciate the hard work Turks do and realize that Turks in Germany have had the short end of the stick, at the same time they will never, never consider the grandchildren of Turk immigrants to be German. In the end Europe is defined by race, ethnicity and religion. America is defined by attitude. That's the difference. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2006-02-05 12:19 |
| #4 and the Mormons Huh? |
| Posted by: Rantburg Interiors to Go 2006-02-05 11:55 |
| #3 What we should do is start assimilating our immigrants again. Get rid of multi-culturalism and get back to Americanism. Bust the NEA and make strikes by govewrnment employees illegal. If immigrants don't want to paly balll, they pay a price. If they want to live oddly like the Amish and the Mormons, there's still plenty of Montana available. Welcome to America. You're now an American. I don't care where your parents came from. |
| Posted by: Whaviper Omolurong9320 2006-02-05 10:21 |
| #2 Understood, Barbara. But here's the rub: Sweden made implicit - and explicit - promises to those immigrants, and did not make demands. The result is a population of young men with no jobs, no skills, lots of free time, a subsistence income from the state .... and hugely simmering resentment, deliberately stoked by imams. The reality is that in SOME places, Swedish living conditions for these immigrants really are rather nice, physically. But the Swedish economic and political structures get in the way of turning that into lasting prosperity and a sense of dignity that comes from work. I'm not so much interested in criticizing Sweden, although I've done my share of that and they certainly deserve it. When even the NYT says they made huge mistakes, it's a given that people here (at least) are catching on to the fundamental errors they've made. What I'm interested in is how this parallels places like Detroit in our country, and what we can or should do to disarm the ticking time bomb that these populations may turn into, here and in Europe. And before you write off the Euros, take a look at how much of our exports are sold there. |
| Posted by: lotp 2006-02-05 10:00 |
| #1 I understand this history - and what's really behind it. The Swedes, like their socialist leftie brethern, added all these "refugees" to their welfare rolls so they could feel good about themselves about how much they had "helped" those backward, uneducated brown people. (Who of course can't be expected to work or learn the language or assimilate or anything, since they're so uneducated and backward. And brown.) Now the chickens created by the leftist, holier-than-thou socialists have come home to roost. In spades. With literally murderous intent. And gosh darn, my sympathy meter is in the shop, where they're having huge problems finding repair parts. (I think they used to be made by one of those failed Swedish industries.) |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-02-05 09:21 |