18 June 2024 12:50 am Views - 1512
The number of refugees to Europe is said to increase in the years ahead
“We do not want to become fortress Europa,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a speech referring to the endless waves of African and Middle Eastern refugees arriving in Western Europe. She made no reference to the origins of this term, as if Germany and the rest of Europe has cut itself off fully from this inglorious past.
But the mere mention of a fortress Europa is ominous. In German, ‘Festung Europa’ originally meant Nazi occupied Europe after Hitler’s World War II Blitzkrieg conquests. Almost all the 27 EU countries, barring neutral Sweden and Switzerland, were part of it, suffering high handed German rule and atrocities.
Festung Europa
‘Festung Europa’ came to an ignominious end in 1945 when Allied and Soviet armies put an end to Hitler’s idea of a thousand year Reich. The European far right was relegated to lick its wounds in the shadows, and all seemed well until a few years ago. A series of events gave it the chance to become a major player in European politics again – instability in Lebanon, poverty in the Maghreb (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco), civil war in Syria, the rash decision by the then US President George W. Bush and his junior partner, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to invade Iraq, opened a Pandora’s box of Islamic radicals; plus waves of immigrants seeking safety in Europe, alongside endless African conflicts – South Sudan (now all of Sudan), Uganda, and other troubled regions created a flooding in to Europe of refugees.
There are twenty five million migrant workers in the EU, including Asians and Latin Americans. But the overwhelming majority in most cases are now African and Middle Eastern, and the latter are mostly Muslims. This brings up the other bogey –Islamic radicals, and it isn’t just the far right that is protesting. The centrist parties and even liberals are raising their voices – enough is enough, we don’t want Islamists among us.
In Britain
Britain is not part of the EU, and it isn’t ruled by the far right. But the Conservatives under Prime Minister Ricky Sunak have finally declared war on immigration. It says it’s targeting illegal immigrants and Islamists. But within this dragnet Britain has begun deporting even care workers who have lived and worked there for years. The Islamist label is pinned on moderate Palestinian and Arab students and workers, people making protests against the Israeli/Hamas conflict in Gaza, and they are targeted, too.
Back in the EU
The EU has nearly 400 million eligible voters; the world’s biggest democratic election. In elections held across 27 EU member states last week, the far right made clear and remarkable gains, leaving hitherto strong green and liberal parties were left in the shadows. The Netherlands, where a left wing-Green partnership got a large number of votes, was the only exception.
The far right came out strongest in France, Italy and Germany (in Austria too, the far right Freedom Party looked set to finish first). All three countries have been refuges, if not havens, for refugees. Under former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s benign ‘Wir Shaffen Das’ (we can do it) refugee-friendly policy, Germany took in millions of refugees, including many Syrians. Not anymore. The right-wing government which succeeded Merkel wants to repatriate them. Further north, Nordic countries are even offering money for Syrian refugees to return home.
Italy’s right-wing government has signed a pact with neighbouring Albania to outsource its refugees to detention centres there. Britain hopes to send theirs to Rwanda. This decision was nullified by the Supreme Court, on the basis that Rwanda would not be able to guarantee their safety, but the government has appealed and is grimly set on this course, while many others with jobs and homes have been arrested and face deportation within sixty days.
Fake job agencies
British authorities are using almost any excuse to deport people with work permits who have lived in the UK for years. One excuse is that they arrived in Britain via fake job agencies. Such agencies are typically run by Indians and Nigerians. People sell or mortgage their assets, borrow and beg to pay exorbitant sums to agencies which operate online. Some do provide jobs to new arrivals from India and elsewhere, while others have to do their own job hunting, usually in the health care sector.
British authorities have begun cancelling the licenses of such fake agencies. When the license goes, so does the validity of any work permits given by them. Qualified care workers who have lived in Britain for years are shocked to get letters from the Home Office saying they should find new jobs within sixty days or face deportation, and it’s impossible to find new jobs that fit their requirements in the economically chaotic Britain of today.
An Indian brother and sister duo who paid 30,000 US dollars to an online agency arrived in Britain to learn the promised jobs don’t exist, and authorities have told them to find jobs within 60 days or face deportation back to India. They will face ruin and humiliation when they get back home. This belies the propaganda machine of the Narendra Modi government that India’s is now the world’s fastest growing economy and India will be heaven to its teeming millions before long. Beneath the gloss, there are millions and millions of graduates, both employed and unemployed, who are struggling. One just needs to compare per capita incomes and living standards in India and China to get the true picture.
But Europe is no longer the haven that long suffering Asians, Arabs or Africans dream of. The squabbling EU is finally united on one theme – no more immigrants. They even want to get those immigrants already there out of Europe.
In Germany, the centrist CDU must now play politics according to right wing voter wishes. Most disturbingly, in France, a country which has cherished its secular values for decades, the Front Nationale of Marine Le Pen got 30% of the vote, surging ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance Party.
Macron’s response was to call for general elections. He’s gambling that, in case he has to work with Marine Le Pen as prime minister until the next presidential elections, she will stumble so badly that he can win a second term.
YouTube is full of anti-immigrant videos from the UK and the EU, falling short of hate speech so they can stay online, but fuelling hatred against immigrants. In one, a protester calls Britain a Christian nation, a term one has not been heard of since the 19th century. They often use the term ‘British values’.
Talking to a British teacher at an international school in Colombo, I was puzzled to hear him speaking of ‘British values’ (here in Colombo, not in London). He has brought his fears like baggage over here. Europeans including the British are in deep trouble, not just because of any Islamist threat. The British feeling of smugness and superiority because of technology and high standards of living are now, when being threatened; therefore, they are behaving just like ‘the poor, badly educated, technologically backward Asians, Arabs and Africans do’, as a British person might say. It is inflexible to talk of ‘British values’ or any other values in that context.
It has become an urgent situation to look in more detail at how the EU countries are dealing with migration, legal or illegal.