Apologists for backward peoples invading wealthy developed nations can’t get their story straight.
One lot dismisses the irruption of 50,000 fighting-age men into the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta as a nothingburger. Because most of the intruders quickly returned to Morocco, bien pensents suggest an apology would be appropriate from people outraged at the incursion or expressing worry that it will ripple through Europe.
Not all border crossers were fighting young men, but the women among them were so few that they seemed mere specks on an incoming tide of testosterone. Maybe they accounted for two in every 100 insurgents, which would push the total to 51,000, still short of the 60.000 reported by Ceutan officials.
It was wall-to-wall manhood below the age of 35, triumphal and aggressive, brushing past security forces, jeering and mugging for cameras. Once they got to Spanish territory, they started fighting. At least two people were stabbed, the visitors rampaged through streets, chased people and beat them, looted shops, broke into homes, defiled beaches and woodland. For decrying this, we’re supposed to apologize?!
So much was culpably blundered. Spanish and European Union policy has been so weak for so long that the marauders knew they could get away with it and thought they could stay. Some will. Frontier barriers were flimsy and Spanish authorities are only now strengthening them. Border guards were too few, lacked orders and the will to be ruthless, and were quickly overwhelmed. Moroccan authorities opened the gates and let migrants through. Traffickers operated unmolested inside Morocco, bringing cheering and waving migrants in trucks up to the border. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, a socialist whose policy has been to facilitate mass migration, expressed brief concern over the traducing of his nation’s sovereignty, then breezed off for three weeks of scheduled vacation in the Canary Islands.
As this litany makes plain, a corps of commentators and Euro-officials want you to believe the infernal scenes we witnessed on the southern flank of Europe were no big deal. But other pro-migrant propagandists think what we’re seeing is a very big and shameful deal indeed. They’re upset not over the plight of Ceutans whose home was swamped, not over the continuous flow of Africans into Europe where they are not wanted by ordinary people, and not over the utter failure of officialdom to stop them.
No, this second group of migrant apologists is concerned, rather, that the poor migrants aren’t being welcomed properly with food, shelter, and counseling about how to succeed in their quest to live in northern countries, upon which they have no moral or legal claim.
Al Jazeera ran a TV segment in which its reporter told viewers in mournful tones that the Spanish army had “finally” brought water for the migrants, but it was “the first bit of assistance most have received since arriving.” The report went on that although most migrants have gone back to Morocco, there is still a “human crisis left behind.”
The crisis Al Jazeera is concerned about is not the one suffered by Ceutans, but that of the young men who voluntarily invaded the enclave, many hundreds or thousands of whom are still there lying on the beaches and sidewalks.
But wait, wasn’t all this a nothingburger because it was over almost as soon as it had begun? Yes, but don’t expect consistency from those who seize on any scourge that comes to hand and, taking the invaders, critique local officials and dismiss the concerns of ordinary European citizens.
The foreigners camped on the Ceuta strand are from Sudan, Algeria, Egypt, Mali, Senegal, and Somalia. So they’ve traveled as much as 5,000 miles to get to European territory. Why should East African dysfunction be the task of Europe’s westernmost fringe to fix? The migrants want asylum and say that’s what Europe “should do for us” without being asked to explain why their problem is properly someone else’s.
“I’m really struck on this beach,” says Al Jazeera’s man on the spot, “by the almost total lack of support these people have received since arriving here… There is almost no one for them to talk to, to appeal to, who can reassure them or give them any idea what may happen next.”
What sensible people will be struck by is not that but by the question: Why do people who broke in illegally have any right to expect anything from the people upon whom they have imposed themselves?
The migrants almost all come for economic reasons rather than because they are genuine refugees fleeing persecution. They simply prefer to live in countries that function better than their own, where they can earn more money. One can hardly blame them.
And there is an endless supply of them, since Africa’s population has more than tripled in the past 50 years. So it is a problem Europe will face continuously from now on, and one that so far it has singularly failed to meet with any competence or strength of will.
Nevertheless, for all its incompetence and weakness, the one thing Europe cannot plausibly be blamed for is failing in a moral duty to help the invaders. Helping them encourages more — more people from the benighted continent overwhelming native citizens and economies. The moral duty of European governments is not to help foreigners while telling their own citizens to suck it up. It is to help their own people and keep the invaders out.