FRANCE, IMMIGRATION AND NATIONAL SERVICE

COME TOGETHER!- WILL IT WORK?

It has been argued here that France and Belgium show some of the worst aspects of the immigration problems in the European Union. Brussels was the breeding ground for the deadliest attacks by Islamic terrorists in Paris less than ten years ago, and recent events and circumstances in France have only increased fears of more to come.

The unavoidable political fallout is the further rise of extreme right parties, whose simplistic slogans will do nothing to address the real issues.

France´s embattled president Macron is trying to rise to the challenges with new rules. The European Union as a whole is attempting to find consensus approaches to immigration, but ultranationalism, deep-rooted racism and systemic xenophobia especially in East European member states make this very difficult. At the same time the southern, Mediterranean flank of the EU has to carry much of the weight of failed policies, by receiving the endless numbers of boat people from Africa and the Middle East.

By contrast with the tied hands of the EU, France´s new immigration law looks like a valiant attempt to clean up some of the worst abuses, by closing loopholes in migratory, social security and labor legislation. Of course it was criticized by a chorus of do-gooders who still haven´t understood that they are the best providers of more votes to the fascists. Lately, excessive dogmatism on all sides has made traditional distinctions between the Left and the Right all but irrelevant. They feed on each other´s extremism.

Immigration in Europe is far more complex than in the United States. As to causes, it is a mixture of post-colonial responsibility of political establishments, indifference to their own people of African elites, the lack of distinction between economic migrants and bona fide refugees, failure to address the networks of people smuggling, and the stupidity of regime-change interventions.

In France, there is an extra troubling additional aspect: the failure of the education system to integrate second or third generation migrants, especially male adolescents. In parallel with emigration reform proper, Macron is trying to start up a system of mandatory national service for teenagers. Again this will be much criticized by wrong-headed humanitarians, as being a an authoritarian scheme.

We have to start somewhere by attacking root causes. Teenagers everywhere may go wrong. It´s part of growing up and we have all been there. But tolerance of deadly attacks by adolescents playing holy war like a video game with real blood, should end.

Bringing youths together outside their ghetto situations, showing ways to respect and true self-respect, seems like a good thing. Like most of my baby-boomer generation I was a staunch anti-militarist in my teens, yet I have excellent memories of the camaraderie of the then mandatory national service in Belgium in the 1970s. And it was nothing like the Hitler Jugend. It may well be that many of the kids welcome finding some structure in their lives, which neither school nor parents ( for their failure comes first) have been able to provide.

France as a whole is a society of many marvelous talents and achievements, over centuries. It also erupts with a certain regularity in uprisings that often look like spoiled children breaking their expensive toys. Balzac, one of the keenest observers of human nature ever to live, wrote humorously that if there were not so many bars in France, there would be a revolution every Tuesday.

Violence by aimless, bored and undereducated migrant kids has become deadlier than France´s weekend-warrior rioting about issues that, seen from the outside, often look frivolous, even futile- such as raising the retirement age above 62… Is that really worth all the barricades, the burning tires and the broken glass, when much more serious situations have to be faced?

If a national service, with the right ingredients, can prevent the further spreading of deadly attacks by teens, and becomes part of a long-term solution at the very roots of immigration ills, we should applaud it. Even more so if it can take some wind out of the sails of the rising fascism.