Three news stories can be excerpted and presented with scarcely any comment. First, from the New York Times: “A Mass Migration Crisis, and It May Yet Get Worse.”
There are more displaced people and refugees now than at any other time in recorded history — 60 million in all — and they are on the march in numbers not seen since World War II. They are coming not just from Syria, but from an array of countries and regions, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, even Haiti, as well as any of a dozen or so nations in sub-Saharan and North Africa. …
The most striking thing about the current migration crisis, however, is how much bigger it could still get. …
A quarter of Afghans told a Gallup Poll that they want to leave, and more than 100,000 are expected to try to flee to Europe this year.
There are between six million and eight million people displaced in Syria, along with more than four million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. …
The Gallup Poll, based on data compiled from more than 450,000 interviews in 151 nations from 2009 to 2011, found that in Nigeria, which already has double the population of Germany, 40 percent of people would emigrate to the West if they could. And the lesson of 2015 — for them and much of the world — is that they can. …
“I don’t think this wave can stop,” said Sonja Licht of the International Center for Democratic Transition. “It can maybe from time to time be somewhat less intensive, we simply have to prepare. The global north must be prepared that the global south is on the move, the entire global south. This is not just a problem for Europe but for the whole world.”
The Times tries to soften the message by blaming “failed interventions” and, more absurdly, “climate change” and colonialism for the southern migration/invasion. But even the paper’s liberal readers are unlikely to take much comfort from those explanations.
Next, from the Gladstone Institute: “Germany: 20 Million Muslims by 2020.”
Germany’s Muslim population is set to nearly quadruple to an astonishing 20 million within the next five years, according to a demographic forecast by Bavarian lawmakers.
The German government expects to receive 1.5 million asylum seekers in 2015, and possibly even more in 2016. After factoring in family reunifications — based on the assumption that individuals whose asylum applications are approved will subsequently bring an average of four additional family members to Germany — that number will swell exponentially. This is in addition to the 5.8 million Muslims already living in Germany. …
The surge in Germany’s Muslim population represents a demographic shift of epic proportions, one that will change the face of Germany forever, “but we are just standing by, watching it happen.”
Addressing an expo in Nuremburg on October 14, [the president of the Bavarian Association of Municipalities, Uwe] Brandl warned that untrammeled migration will entail heavy costs for German taxpayers and may also lead to social unrest. He said:
A four-member refugee family receives up to 1,200 euros per month in transfer payments. Plus accommodation and meals.
Brandl said this also applies to the electronic health card, which provides asylum seekers with the same benefits as Germans who have paid into the health insurance system for many years. To criticize this as unfair has “nothing to do with racism or right-wing extremism.” …
The so-called non-paper [produced by German intelligence] (the author of the document remains anonymous) warns that the “integration of hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants will be impossible given the large numbers involved and the already-existing Muslim parallel societies in Germany.” The document adds:
We are importing Islamic extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, national and ethnic conflicts of other peoples, as well as a different understanding of society and law. German security agencies are unable to deal with these imported security problems, and the resulting reactions from the German population.
Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Söder said: “We need to be clear that there must be limits and quotas for immigration — we cannot save the whole world. The refugee influx will not be stopped unless we secure our borders and send a clear signal that not everyone can come to Germany.” …
Speaking at an October 22 gathering of the European People’s Party in Madrid, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned of the consequences of Merkel’s immigration policies. He said:
We are in deep trouble. The migration crisis has the potential to destabilize governments, countries and the whole European continent….
What we have been facing is not a refugee crisis. This is a migratory movement composed of economic migrants, refugees and also foreign fighters. This is an uncontrolled and unregulated process…. I also want to underline that there is an unlimited source of supply of people, after Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Africa is now also on the move. …
Our moral responsibility is to give back these people their homes and their countries. It can’t be our objective to provide them with a new European life. Right to human dignity and security are basic rights. But neither the German, Austrian nor the Hungarian way of life is a basic right of all people on the Earth. It is only a right of those ones who have contributed to it. Europe is not able to accept everyone who wants a better life.
Western civilization, as developed in much of Europe, North America and a few other places (e.g., Australia) has proven decisively superior to all other civilizations on Earth. It is therefore not surprising that people who live in less successful, poorer, more violent, more repressive societies would prefer to live in the West (or, to put it in geographic rather than cultural terms, the North). But there is no possible way for the advanced Western countries to absorb the billions of people who would like to live in them, especially since most of those who want to enjoy the material fruits of Western democracy have little or no understanding of the values and principles that make Western societies successful.
Finally, from the Associated Press: “Immigrants caught at border believe families can stay in US.”
Hundreds of immigrant families caught illegally crossing the Mexican border between July and September told U.S. immigration agents they made the dangerous trip in part because they believed they would be permitted to stay in the United States and collect public benefits. …
The Associated Press obtained copies of the interview summaries, which were compiled in reports by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Intelligence. They said hundreds of people traveling as part of families consistently cited opportunities to obtain permission to stay in the U.S., claim asylum and receive unspecified benefits. Immigrants spoke of “permisos,” or a pass to come into the United States.
Under federal law, individuals who are “likely to become a public charge” are not allowed to immigrate to the United States. This is one of many provisions of federal law that are routinely violated. Today, most immigrants are immediately placed in various welfare programs, starting with food stamps. It is taken for granted that many immigrants, perhaps most, will remain “public charges” indefinitely and perhaps for generations. Politicians of one of our political parties consider this a feature, not a bug.
The bottom line, it appears, is that The Camp of the Saints is here. Not someday, but right now.
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