In the 1960s, France brought in hundreds of thousands of Muslim North African immigrants to fill their factories and keep wages down.  The more illiterate they were, the better.  These immigrants were supposed to go home.  They did not. 
Instead, when the rules changed in the 1970s, they brought in their families.  Today France is a country of ‘Banlieues’ ghettos full of angry young Muslims.

Germany’s business leaders say they need a positive immigration of 500,000 people a year.  They are getting their wish in spades. However, what may be good for the bottom line could end up as socially disastrous for Germany as the French experience.

We are told the German people are happy to receive 800,000 migrants this year. Any German news coverage of those opposed to the migration concentrates on neo-Nazi extremists, as if the rest of the population were in total agreement.

This could change quickly. This week the German tax-payer learned that the bill for this year alone will be ten billion euros; that the 800,000 migrants now arriving could easily be joined by another million next year; that far fewer than half are Syrian.  As a matter of fact, many have deliberately lost their identification papers to claim they are Syrian when they are not.

Angela Merkel says “Germany will change” because of the new influx.  She is right. But are the Germany people, so attached to their traditions, their ‘Kulture’ and their Christian heritage going to be as happy as the business leaders over the change to a more present Muslim culture? I doubt it. The recent opposition to the construction of Mosques for the Turkish migrant community is nothing, I think, compared to what is to come.

The massive, uncontrolled arrival is also building support for far right, nationalist parties throughout Europe.   Let us not fool ourselves.  Entering a country without the proper paperwork is illegal and these migrants are basically entering other peoples’s homes without being invited.  Some on the right would see they are even helping themselves to the fridge.

By opening the doors wide, Germany and Austria have made an appeal for people to illegally enter Europe and the countries upstream (Greece, Italy, Hungary) cannot cope. Yet, it is Hungary which is being criticized for respecting both the Schengen Agreement and the Dublin Accords by insisting the illegal migrants register and request asylum in the first country they arrive in.

Germany and Austria, with French complicity, are encouraging exactly what the Dublin Accords were set up to prevent : Asylum shopping.

What is happening now is not so different to what brought down the Roman Empire when hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants fled the Huns and crossed into Rome’s territory.  The Romans were no better at integrating the new, massive, culturally different, arrivals than Europeans have proven to be over the past 50 years.

The French do not know how many Muslims or Blacks they have in the country, because they have no ethnic or religious census.  This helps the right steer up fear. Those on the left may deny the French people are generally hostile to this ‘sub-culture’ but this week Prime Minister Valls announced a massive government campaign to fight racism and anti-semitism.  This is a sure sign that the problem is much bigger than the government has been willing to admit.

Why do the Germans think they can obtain different results than the French have, or Rome for that matter?