Is there a Tom Tancredo in France?
Gindy links to a Newsday article about illegal immigrants in France. Excerpts:
Five years ago, Guy left a pregnant wife in Ivory Coast, trekked across west Africa and crossed into Europe by clambering over a barbed-wire fence into the Spanish enclave of Melilla on Morocco's northern tip.
Today, the former factory worker has yet to find the promised land he had hoped for in Europe, seen by many Africans as a place of relative peace, political stability and bountiful jobs.
He and other immigrants who made their way to France say life is far tougher than they had expected, because of racism, housing woes, hassles with police and the near-impossibility of obtaining work papers....
Some politicians in rich European nations argue that the influx of immigrants from Africa threatens jobs and security, overwhelms taxed social welfare and health systems, and angers voters. But a U.N.-commissioned panel reported this week that international migrants can be a valuable economic resource to their host nations -- one that Western governments do too little to mine.
France has taken a tough tack, flying illegal immigrants home. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who has led the crackdown and says he wants to increase the number of repatriations, is an object of hate to many Africans....
The immigrants, swarming around a reporter, variously insisted they do not do drugs, only want to work and occasionally help out police by intervening to nab pickpockets -- but get no credit for it.
"It makes you regret having left Cameroon," said Honore, 22. "France is not the country of human rights and freedom that it claims to be. It is humiliating -- taking our dignity and our honor."
"White people are mean," he said, adding that only "psychological toughness" kept him from leaving a country that, despite it all, still offered him a way to send home $180 each month....
On balance, he is ambivalent about coming to France, though he still understands the motivation that drives thousands of Africans to try to reach Europe every year.
"Life here isn't easy. Integrating isn't easy," he said. "When you get here, it's total disappointment. But as long as there is no help for Africans at home, I bet they'll keep on coming."
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