Post

re: Europe: Immigration and Street Crime (David Gress, Denmark) (John Eipper, USA, 11/18/09 2:22 am)

David Gress responds to Jon Kofas's post of 17 November: There is no fear-mongering that I can detect either in the US or Europe, quite the contrary. We are, indeed, often told that economic benefits from immigrants outweigh their costs, but I defy Jon Kofas to provide evidence. That which exists shows a different story. In Oslo, the capital of Norway, only one of more than 40 reported rapes in 2008 was committed by a native; all others by foreigners, i.e. Muslims. And don't even ask about the tortures and rapes suffered by Swedish girls in the name of multiculturalism; their number is legion. The German economist Michael Mannheimer has tried to assess the economic costs of immigration to various European countries; his results are here: http://www.pi-news.net/2009/11/essay-was-die-islamische-migration-europa-kostet/ and following chapters. The costs are huge, on the order of several thousand dollars per taxpayer per year. And they grow, yearly. In much of Europe, most immigrants do not contribute to the labor market, but receive benefits provided by productive taxpayers. Perhaps Kofas is thinking of Mexicans in the US, who work in construction or gardening or pool services for the rich. But even for the US, as George Borjas of Harvard has shown, the net benefit is nil or negative. See data at www.borjas.com . Of course there are natives and foreigners on the planet. No one can tell me, a science fiction reader of 50 years' standing, that there is no human race and that we would not all mobilize against alien attack. On the other hand, nations are enlarged families; national loyalities are not imagined, but biologically rooted. Americans are not Arabs, nor are Danes. Mainstream media downplay or censor information about perpetrators if they are not white. They have no interest in dramatizing news coverage; quite the contrary. To them, immigrants are always innocent and natives automatically suspect. So they lie, and people die, as the US Army lied or ignored facts before Fort Hood, where minimal common sense would have chucked this Muslim fanatic out of the Army years before he had the chance to kill 14 people. JE comments: Actually, many Americans are Arabs, from my friend at the corner Citgo who sells me a lot of gas to my new colleague, an Adrian physician from Lebanon, who kindly agreed at the last minute to teach our Arabic class in January. I shudder to think how desolate the Detroit region would be without its Arab population, one of the nation's largest.

Visits: 6