Writing in the Daily Mail, Peter Hitchens contemplates the latest twists in Europe’s migration crisis:
Actually we can’t do what we like with [Britain]. We inherited it from our parents and grandparents and we have a duty to hand it on to our children and grandchildren, preferably improved and certainly undamaged. It is one of the heaviest responsibilities we will ever have. We cannot just give it away to complete strangers on an impulse because it makes us feel good about ourselves.
Every one of the posturing notables simpering ‘refugees welcome’ should be asked if he or she will take a refugee family into his or her home for an indefinite period, and pay for their food, medical treatment and education.
I’ll interrupt Hitchens to note that Pope Francis, a man whose “moral exhibitionism” (to quote Theodore Dalrymple) over immigration will have played its part in encouraging a surge that was underway well before the recent inflow of Syrians, has announced that the Vatican will host two refugee families. Two.
Back to Hitchens:
[Britain’s] advantages depend very much on our shared past, our inherited traditions, habits and memories. Newcomers can learn them, but only if they come in small enough numbers. Mass immigration means we adapt to them, when they should be adapting to us. So now, on the basis of an emotional spasm, dressed up as civilisation and generosity, are we going to say that we abandon this legacy and decline our obligation to pass it on, like the enfeebled, wastrel heirs of an ancient inheritance letting the great house and the estate go to ruin?
…Refugees don’t confront the police of the countries in which they seek sanctuary. They don’t chant orchestrated slogans or lie across the train tracks.
…Refugees don’t demand or choose their refuge. They ask and they hope. When we become refugees one day (as we may well do), we will discover this.
As to what those angry, confident and forceful young men actually are, I’ll leave you to work it out, as I am too afraid of the Thought Police to use what I think is the correct word.
Good Hitchens that he is, Peter Hitchens can never be accused of understating his case. I don’t agree with all that he says (plenty of these incomers are not the “angry, confident and forceful young men” he cites), but I do agree with what he recommends:
[It] would involve the grim-faced determination of Australia, making it plain in every way that our doors are open only to limited numbers of people, chosen by us, [and it would involve] enduring the righteous scorn of the supposedly enlightened.
Anyway, read the whole thing and decide for yourself.
Meanwhile, Angela Merkel smugs for the camera:
”I am happy that Germany has become a country that many people outside of Germany now associate with hope,” she said at a news conference in Berlin. “This is something to cherish when you look back at our history.”
But….
[Merkel] and her vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, coupled their message of optimism with a warning to European Union partners who have resisted a push from Berlin, Paris and Brussels to agree quotas for refugees flowing in mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
“What isn’t acceptable in my view is that some people are saying this has nothing to do with them,” Merkel said. “This won’t work in the long run. There will be consequences although we don’t want that.”
Ah yes, consequences.
Gabriel said that if countries in eastern Europe and elsewhere continued to resist accepting their fair share of refugees, the bloc’s open border regime, known as Schengen, would be at risk.
“This would be a dramatic political blow for Europe, but also a heavy economic blow, also for those countries that are saying they don’t want to help now,” he said.
Not really. Restoring border controls would not remove the right of free movement within the EU, but it would ensure that it was better policed. So, Sigmar, faster please.
And some statistics:
Just last month, more than 100,000 asylum seekers reached Germany, which is preparing for 800,000 this year, around one percent of its population….
The 160,000 [asylum-seekers] that [EU Commission President Juncker] wants to redistribute within the EU are just a fraction of the many hundreds of thousands of refugees and economic migrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East that have reached Europe this year on leaky boats across the Mediterranean or over land through the Balkan peninsula.
Oh yes, from the BBC, there’s this:
German customs officers have seized packages containing Syrian passports and police suspect they are being sold illegally to asylum seekers.
A finance ministry official said both genuine and forged passports were in the packets intercepted in the post. Germany is letting Syrians register for asylum regardless of where they entered the EU. As refugees from the Syrian civil war, most have a right to asylum. The passports can help fraudulent claimants to get asylum, the EU says.
Consequences.