{"id":25803,"date":"2023-12-01T19:21:07","date_gmt":"2023-12-01T15:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.syndicationbureau.com\/?p=25803"},"modified":"2023-12-01T19:21:33","modified_gmt":"2023-12-01T15:21:33","slug":"europes-rising-tide-of-immigration-hysteria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.syndicationbureau.com\/europes-rising-tide-of-immigration-hysteria\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe\u2019s Rising Tide of Immigration Hysteria"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
In The Netherlands, a formerly fringe far-right party wins more seats in the\u00a0Dutch general election<\/a>\u00a0than any other political group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Dublin, a knife attack outside a school triggers rioting and looting<\/a> by right-wing thugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the UK, the latest YouGov poll reveals rising support<\/a> for the right-wing Reform party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The common theme in each of these recent news stories is immigration, a topic that has risen to the top of political agendas across Europe, threatening to transform liberal democracies into illiberal bastions of intolerance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Make no mistake. This isn\u2019t about \u201cillegal\u201d immigration. It is about racism, pure and simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For instance, it suits the UK government to make an issue out of \u201cstopping the boats<\/a>\u201d crossing the English Channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the numbers involved<\/a> are tiny compared with the number of migrants coming to the UK legally<\/a>, to work as doctors, nurses and care-home assistants, or to study as students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And even those students are coming under fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The UK is seeing a record number of students<\/a> coming from overseas to study. Worth millions to universities, which charge foreign students far higher fees than their British counterparts, they contribute significantly<\/a> to the nation\u2019s GDP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some stay on in the country after completing their course. If they do, it\u2019s because they\u2019ve got a job and are paying taxes to the treasury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regardless, right-wing politicians are now demanding that such students should not be allowed to bring family <\/a>to live with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Europe is walking, eyes tight shut, into a new dark age that makes a mockery of the 70-million-plus lives lost during the Second World War in the effort to rid the world of the cancerous, supremacist ideology of the Nazis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A fundamental misunderstanding underpins Europe\u2019s rising tide of immigration hysteria: Europe, with birth rates declining, needs immigration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the UK in particular, migrants form a large part of the workforce, including doctors and nurses, but also carry out many of the low-paid jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But at the same time, right-wing politicians are peddling the false trope that migrants are taking \u201cour\u201d jobs and housing, clogging up \u201cour\u201d health system and \u2013 most sinister of all \u2013 \u201cchanging the shape of our country before our very eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That last incendiary quote comes from Richard Tice, a wealthy British property developer who founded the UK Brexit party and is now the leader of its successor Reform party, which says Britain is \u201cbroken\u201d and \u201cneeds net zero immigration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Conservative government, he said, had \u201ctotally betrayed<\/a>\u201d the British people because immigration to the UK was at a record high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is, but only because if it wasn\u2019t, Britain\u2019s economy would collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regardless, traditional, more reasonable political parties across Europe are in a bind. If they ignore the rising tide of racist hysteria, they will be swept away, and so they are pandering to the mob. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the UK, the Conservative government is fragmenting, torn apart by the competing narratives of the beleaguered party\u2019s few remaining centrist MPs, and the extremists like the recently sacked Home Secretary Suella Braverman, architect of the bizarre policy of dispatching boat people to Rwanda<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In The Netherlands, a four-party coalition government collapsed in July after failing to reach agreement over measures to control the flow of migrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n