Breeding Bin Ladens: America, Islam, and the Future of Europe

5: Migration Migraines

Chapter 5 MIGRATION MIGRAINES “We were asleep in the house. All of a sudden the shooting started. There was noise everywhere. We all ran for our lives. Everyone was running. I left the house and followed a group of fleeing villagers . The armed men killed everyone. They killed children and women.” Roberto, who was nine years old at the time of this attack , was separated from his family, never to see them again. Fleeing Angola with the other villagers, the young Roberto arrived in Sierra Leone, where he remained for six years until a bloody civil war forced him to flee once more. Surviving life in a Nigerian refugee camp, Roberto and 34 other Africans paid a smuggler $200 each to board a ship bound for Europe. After months in the lightless ship’s hull, he was told he was on the coast of Greece. Europe at last. But the morning sun revealed street signs not in Greek, but Turkish. The ship had dropped him in Izmir, a town on the Aegean coast of Turkey. Finding his way to Istanbul and meeting up with other Africans, he kept clear of the police and sought out smugglers in Istanbul’s McDonald’s—the standard meeting grounds for human traffickers and their clients. Once again he engaged a smuggler to take him to Greece. In a little boat he came so close to Greece that the passengers could see the 90 city lights. A Greek patrol boat spotted them. They were saved. Roberto and his fellow travelers waved and cheered, knowing that they would be welcomed, fed, and registered with the UN Commission on Refugees. But as the coast guard ship approached, they saw it was moving too fast. It rammed their tiny boat and let them drown. Twelve died, five survived, Roberto among them. Roberto ’s story, and those of many other migrants, have been chronicled in Iranian-American scholar Behzad Yaghmaian’s moving book, Embracing the Infidel.1 Yaghmaian reveals the traumas that many Muslims undergo before ever reaching European shores. Just as Europe is tightening its borders and restricting its immigration and asylum laws, the number of transnational migrants is increasing. They are fleeing not only poverty, but also political repression, Islamic fundamentalism, civil wars, ethnic cleansings, and the lack of opportunity to build better lives for their children. Many do not survive the journey, falling prey to human smugglers, disease, treacherous land and sea crossings, and the despair from months or years of waiting in makeshift shelters, the holding pens for the world’s estimated 19.2 million refugees.2 Those who do survive and reach their target lands often find only new perils and frustrations as they struggle to adapt to a wholly different culture from what they left behind. Millions of Muslims are on the move each year, most of them thrust along by globalization’s invisible hand. As they enter Fortress Europe, whether by legal or illegal means, they will impact not just Europe’s economic growth, but its social, political, and cultural identity as well. If their integration into European society continues along its current trajectory, only social unrest or upheaval can result. European states have belatedly awoken to this truth and are now responding with tougher immigration laws. But will they go too far? Migration Migraines 91 92 breeding bin ladens The “Delta Plan” In 1953, the floods for which the Dutch lowlands are famous burst their banks, leaving some 1,800 people dead in their wake. In response , the Dutch erected a series of dikes and dams to prevent a similar disaster’s recurrence. The Dutch dubbed the project “The Delta Plan.” After Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, American engineers traveled to Holland to study its system of dams in preparation for the rebuilding of New Orleans . But Holland is currently erecting a new kind of Delta Plan, this time to block a flood of Muslim migrants. As of early 2004, the population of Holland’s second-largest city, Rotterdam, was half foreign. That percentage is expected to swell to 60 percent in just a decade. According to the new Delta Plan, no new refugees may settle in Rotterdam for the next five years, and no immigrants will be permitted in unless they can demonstrate an income 20 percent above the minimum wage. No new low-cost housing projects will be erected...