Immigrants now target of Europe’s racists

Press, 24 January 1986, Page 17

Immigrants now target of Europe’s racists

From

KARREN BEANLAND,

a former

staff reporter on “The Press” who is now studying in Paris.

Sometimes it seems the hardest thing to do in Paris is to find the French.

It is not only during the tourist season that the city is full of foreign voices. Walking through some districts it is easy to imagine yourself in Algeria, Tunisia or Morocco, Indo-China or Turkey. People in colourful national dress celebrate their own traditional or religious festivals, speak their native tongue, and buy from shops which stock products exclusively from home. This rich cultural mixture adds a wonderful cosmopolitan flavour to the air of Paris. Unfortunately, there is a darker side. Foreigners, mostly immigrant workers, congregate in certain districts, usually the poorer quarters, because they no longer feel welcome in France.

It is a picture which has become increasingly common throughout Europe. In recent years, the ugliest face of racism has had its highest profile in Britain, where there have been race riots and horrifying racial incidents, such' as one in the East End of London when an Indian woman and her children were burnt to death in their home after an arson attack. Incidents like that are no longer uncommon.

Now, immigration and its consequences is becoming one of the biggest talking points throughout Europe. It will be a dominant issue in the French Parliamentary elections in March, just as it was in the Belgian general elections last October. Right-wing parties which espouse harsh antiimmigrant policies are attracting more and more support

During the 1950 s and 19605, when industry was expanding and searching for labour to do the jobs Europeans did not want Western Europe welcomed workers from Yugoslavia, Turkey, and North Africa. The workers were attracted by higher rates of pay and better living conditions than they could hope for at home. Today, nearly 13 million foreigners live in the Common Market countries, and an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants. The biggest groups are the Turks and North Africans, which each number about two million. More than 1.5 million African Arabs live in France alone.

French people were shocked recently by a magazine prediction that by the year 2015 their country, with a population of 54 million, including 4 million immigrants, will have 5 million fewer French and 5 million more foreigners. Resentment against foreigners compounded during the 1970 s as Europe plunged deeper into economic crisis and unemployment started its steady climb. At the same time, as immigrants took up their citizenship rights and raised children in their new homes, they made more demands on ever-stretched social and educational facilities.

Some Governments are trying to find ways to limit the right of foreigners to receive welfare

benefits. In districts of Brussels, where a quarter of the residents are Turkish or African, local authorities have refused to issue new residents’ permits. West Germany, France, and Belgium have introduced schemes to encourage immigrants to return to their homelands.- The French Government offers 150,000 francs ($35,000) to unemployed foreigners who can find work or set up a business in their own country. In 1985, 20,000 people took advantage of the scheme. The year before, 220,000 Turks left Germany under a similar programme. Yet many immigrants find themselves caught between two worlds. In spite of incentives, returning home is not so easy after 15 or 20 years in a new country.

Journalists who visited Turkey recently met a worker who returned from Germany last year, weary of the racism he said had become impossible to avoid there. But his homesickness for Turkey had been replaced by a longing for his adopted home, his friends, and the luxuries he enjoyed in the West “Our own country is a foreign land and it is hard to adapt It Is like when we first arrived in Germany,” he said.

Even worse off are the children of returning workers, some of whom have never visited their native country and do not even

speak the language. They haye trouble adapting to new social customs and morals, and adjusting to a strange schooling system. In Turkey, there have been reports of attacks on children by extreme nationalists who believe children born and raised elsewhere are not “real Turks.”

Far-Right political parties'want to take even stronger moves against foreigners. Jean-Marie Le Pen, the rabble-rousing leader of France’s National Front, wants to seal the country’s borders entirely, send home Immigrants who have lost their jobs, and reintroduce spot police checks to clamp down on illegal immigrants. He has suggested that the answer to France’s unemployment problem is to send all foreigners/ back to their homelands. 7 -

A recent “Le Monde” public opinion survey gave him 10 per cent support In France at least some immigrant groups are starting to fight back.

Late last year there were two civil rights marches which crossed the country. One was by SOS-Racisme, France’s biggest grass-roots anti-racism organisation. The other was organised by the Beurs, trendy Parisian slang for second-generation Arabs. Headed by the mother of a nine-year-old boy who was shot and killed by a Frenchman, the Beur marchers stopped at the town hall in each centre

“Which is to say, in front of the words ’Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite,’ ” explains one of the march organisers. But the French, like the rest of Europe, seem slow to take the point