Mandatory Muslim Immigration in the EU

by Arnold Ahlert

The European Union’s plan to force poorer nations to accept thousands of refugees

On Tuesday, national sovereignty gave way to mandatory multiculturalism in the European Union. A plan to relocate an additional 120,000 Middle Eastern migrants was imposed by EU ministers over the objections four Eastern European countries adamantly opposed to the plan. Slovakia’s Robert Fico illuminated the resistance. “As long as I am prime minister, mandatory quotas will not be implemented on Slovak territory,” he declared in Bratislava.

Slovakia was joined by the Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary. Finland abstained from the vote. Yet despite the quartet’s disapproval, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, led by France and Germany, pushed through the plan proposed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker during his annual State of the Union address in Strasbourg earlier this month. The plan called for 160,000 migrants to be forcibly redistributed from Italy, Greece and Hungary to all other member states, save Britain, Ireland and Denmark, who remain exempt from EU treaties. In addition, Junker called for a review of the “Dublin system” that determines which EU nation is responsible for asylum claims.

In order to make the plan more politically palatable, 66,000 migrants are currently slated for relocation, joining 40,000 migrants approved for asylum in July. The remaining 54,000 had originally been allocated to Hungary where they are currently camped out. But Budapest refused to abide a plan it characterized as an invitation to economic migrants. Thus, those migrants will be reallocated in 2016, possibly among Greece, Italy, Croatia and Austria, bringing the overall total of relocated migrants to 160,000. The plan is ostensibly limited to Syrian, Iraqi and Eritrean asylum-seekers, but the details have yet to be worked out. All of those migrants are people who have purportedly crossed the Mediterranean Sea from Turkey and northern Africa, fleeing the unrelenting violence in Iraq and Syria. 

Luxembourg minister and meeting chairman Jean Asselborn stated that ministers “would have preferred to have an agreement by consensus,” but nonetheless expected objectors to fall into line as required by the law. Germany has been the focus of resentment on the issue, no doubt due to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Sept. 7 announcement that her nation would take 800,000 refugees this year at a cost of $6.6 billion ,and 500,000 per year over the next few years. Less than a week later, German interior minister Thomas de Maizi√®re announced Germany would be imposing border controls in the southern part of the nation for what Merkel called “urgent security reasons.” Austria and Slovakia followed Germany’s lead shortly thereafter as wishful thinking gave way to the inconvenient reality of as many as half a million migrants flooding into the EU.

The plan itself, whereby the tens of thousands of migrants landing in Italy and Greece will be involuntarily moved by their respective national police forces to other EU nations is the epitome of wishful thinking. Those police forces are already overwhelmed, and the plan to relocate migrants bore little resemblance to the reality expressed by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC), which insists 120,000 people represents just six days’ worth of arrivals at the current influx rate. “A relocation programme alone, at this stage in the crisis, will not be enough to stabilise the situation,” insists UNHRC spokeswoman Melissa Fleming.

European elitists have used the now famous image of a dead child washed up on a Turkish beach “to support the notion of Western guilt,”

Fleming is correct. After Hungary closed it border, refugees headed west towards Croatia, and that nation allowed tens of thousands to cross into Europe. Now Croatia has blocked off part of its border with Serbia, because they can’t process migrants fast enough. It noted that 35,000 migrants crossed its border in the week following the Hungarian shutdown. In the Austrian town of Nickelsdorf, 8000 new arrivals filled the town square, as local officials insisted no accommodations were available because existing camps were full. And of the more than 4 million migrants that remain in countries near Syria, at least 270,000 Syrians have requested asylum in Europe.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban expressed the sense of frustration felt by many in the EU. “They are overrunning us,” he told his nation’s Parliament. “They’re not just banging on the door, they’re breaking the door down on top of us. Our borders are in danger, our way of life built on respect for the law, Hungary and the whole of Europe is in danger. Europe hasn’t just left its door open but has sent open invitation… Europe is rich but weak, this is the worst combination, Europe needs to be stronger to defend its borders.” Hungary has passed a law allowing the army to use rubber bullets, tear gas and net guns to maintain control over migrants on its border.

Unsurprisingly Orban was criticized by European colleagues, such as Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek, who, prior to Tuesday’s meeting, declared Eastern European foreign ministers were “absolutely dedicated” to finding a solution with their EU partners. Since the Czech Republic was one of four nations utterly opposed to the agreement, such optimism was short-lived. “Soon we will find out that the emperor has no clothes,” he tweeted after the plan was announced. “Reason lost today.”

One suspects reason was never in play. As The Telegraph’s Janet Daley warned earlier this month, European elitists have used the now famous image of a dead child washed up on a Turkish beach “to support the notion of Western guilt,” even as Bashar Assad’s murderous regime gets a pass. “For some reason, the appalling photographs of the bodies of children who had been deliberately gassed by the Assad regime, laid out on a concrete floor in Syria two years ago, were not sufficiently moving to compel the world to take action,” she writes. “Are dead children only a moral outrage when they are on the beaches of Europe?”

Elitist outrage is more like it, as Daley notes Germany’s magnanimity, which they and other economically advanced EU nations can afford, stands in stark contrast to the economically struggling eastern bloc nations that must initially accommodate that high-mindedness. “Imagine if you were a poor householder, just managing to keep your financial head above water while you attempted to turn your circumstances around, and a very wealthy neighbour decided to throw open his doors to the needy—and one obvious way that those in need could reach that welcoming haven was by tramping through your house,” Daley explains. “Might you find yourself inclined to be unhelpful in the hopes of discouraging others from taking the same path?”

Millions of ordinary Americans are undoubtedly pondering the same question. In addition to the hordes of illegals embraced by our own ruling class, the Obama administration intends to “significantly increase” the number of “worldwide migrants” this nation takes in over the next two years, reaching a total of 100,000 by 2017. Apparently the reality that the legal and illegal immigrant population in the United States has reached a record-breaking 42.6 million, or about one-out-of-eight residents in the U.S.—more than double what it was in 1980—remains insufficient with regard to the “fundamental transformation of the United States” the American left desires. And while the similar elitist-driven multicultural force-feeding devolving the Europe ethos is much more immediate, make no mistake: both are equally inexorable should current trends on both sides of the Atlantic continue.

In Europe, the bill is coming due for a continent that largely relied on America to do the heavily lifting in response to Islamic terrorism