Milhares de tunisianos estão pegando embarcações e chegando em Lampedusa (uma ilha italiana que fica mais próxima da Tunísia que da Sicília), para pedir asilo na Itália e consequentemente na União Européias. E há grande chances que egípcios também procurem asilo europeu. A aceitação dos imigrantes acaba implicando mais imigrantes, que trazem esposas, filhos e primos. O custo da imigração é enorme, cultural, economica e politicamente. Mas também é certo que há um problema humanitário que deve ser resolvido.
As motivações dessa imigração na Itália são as mais diversas, apesar de que, para piorar, alguns dos imigrantes vieram das prisões tunisianas. Entretanto, o resultado é bastante óbvio: problemas urbanos e culturais. Isso ocorre em um momento em que os principais líderes europeus dizem que o multiculturalismo falhou. Eu já comentei sobre isso aqui, quando Angela Merkel levantou o argumento, depois seguido, mais recentemente, por Cameron e Sarkozy. Eles têm razão, qualquer um que conhece a Europa sabe dos grandes problemas culturais que o continente possui. A grande maioria dos imigrantes não assimila a cultura européia e o isolamento entre os nativos e os imigrantes é marca do multiculturalismo. Boa parte da população que chega não fala a língua do país que o recebe, e muitos nem querem aprender. Alguns já são bastante adultos para se aculturar e acabam como camelôs nas ruas das grandes cidades.
Os imigrandes acabam recebendo as benesses do estado do bem-estar social da União Européia e os países, por pertencerem à União Européia, não têm muita liberdade para discutir como alocar esses imigrantes. É disso que reclama Richard North. O ministro do Interior da Itália disse que a "Europa não pode ficar indiferente a essa imigração em massa e que deve tomar uma decisão política forte e decisiva". Ele ainda pediu 100 milhões de euros da União Européia para lidar com os imigrantes tunisianos.
Como condenar um país que quer preservar sua cultura? Não se pode abandonar os imigrantes, então como exigir que os países de origem tratem melhor seus cidadãos?
Glubb Pasha dividiu a história dos impérios em The Fate of Empires (1978) em: Era da Conquista (pioneiros), Era do Comércio, Era da Riqueza, Era do Intelecto, e depois o declínio (com brigas políticas e enfraquecimento da ética). Neste ponto, ele chega à questão do influxo de imigrantes. Ele resume muito bem o problema. Aqui tem um resumo do pensamento de Pasha do site UK Comentators. Abaixo vai a parte sobre imigrantes:
The influx of foreigners
One of the oft-repeated phenomena of great empires is the influx of foreigners to the capital city. Roman historians often complain of the number of Asians and Africans in Rome. Baghdad, in its prime in the ninth century, was international in its population—Persians, Turks, Arabs, Armenians, Egyptians, Africans and Greeks mingled in its streets.
In London today (written in 1978 - LT) , Cypriots, Greeks, Italians, Russians, Africans, Germans and Indians jostle one another on the buses and in the underground, so that it sometimes seems difficult to find any British. The same applies to New York, perhaps even more so. This problem does not consist in any inferiority of one race as compared with another, but simply in the differences between them.
In the age of the first outburst and the subsequent Age of Conquests, the race is normally ethnically more or less homogeneous. This state of affairs facilitates a feeling of solidarity and comradeship. But in the Ages of Commerce and Affluence, every type of foreigner floods into the great city, the streets of which are reputed to be paved with gold. As, in most cases, this great city is also the capital of the empire, the cosmopolitan crowd at the seat of empire exercises a political influence greatly in excess of its relative numbers.
Second- or third-generation foreign immigrants may appear outwardly to be entirely assimilated, but they often constitute a weakness in two directions. First, their basic human nature often differs from that of the original imperial stock. If the earlier imperial race was stubborn and slow-moving, the immigrants might come from more emotional races, thereby introducing cracks and schisms into the national policies, even if all were equally loyal. Second, while the nation is still affluent, all the diverse races may appear equally loyal. But in an acute emergency, the immigrants will often be less willing to sacrifice their lives and their property than will be the original descendants of the founder race.
Third, the immigrants are liable to form communities of their own, protecting primarily their own interests, and only in the second degree that of the nation as a whole. Fourth, many of the foreign immigrants will probably belong to races originally conquered by and absorbed into the empire. While the empire is enjoying its High Noon of prosperity, all these people are proud and glad to be imperial citizens. But when decline sets in, it is extraordinary how the memory of ancient wars, perhaps centuries before, is suddenly revived, and local or provincial movements appear demanding secession or independence. Some day this phenomenon will doubtless appear in the now apparently monolithic and authoritarian Soviet empire. It is amazing for how long such provincial sentiments can survive.
Historical examples of this phenomenon are scarcely needed. The idle and captious Roman mob, with its endless appetite for free distributions of food—bread and games—is notorious, and utterly different from that stern Roman spirit which we associate with the wars of the early republic. In Baghdad, in the golden days of Harun al-Rashid, Arabs were a minority in the imperial capital. Istanbul, in the great days of Ottoman rule, was peopled by inhabitants remarkably few of whom were descendants of Turkish conquerors. In New York, descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers arc few and far between. This interesting phenomenon is largely limited to great cities. The original conquering race is often to be found in relative purity in rural districts and on far frontiers. It is the wealth of the great cities which draws the immigrants. As, with the growth of industry, cities nowadays achieve an ever greater preponderance over the countryside, so will the influence of foreigners increasingly dominate old empires. Once more it may be emphasised that I do not wish to convey the impression that immigrants are inferior to older stocks. They are just different, and they thus tend to introduce cracks and divisions.
Frivolity
As the nation declines in power and wealth, a universal pessimism gradually pervades the people, and itself hastens the decline. There is nothing succeeds like success, and, in the Ages of Conquest and Commerce, the nation was carried triumphantly onwards on the wave of its own self-confidence. Republican Rome was repeatedly on the verge of extinction—in 390 B.C. when the Gauls sacked the city and in 216 B.C. after the Battle of Cannae. But no disasters could shake the resolution of the early Romans. Yet, in the later stages of Roman decline, the whole empire was deeply pessimistic, thereby sapping its own resolution. Frivolity is the frequent companion of pessimism. Let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. The resemblance between various declining nations in this respect is truly surprising. The Roman mob, we have seen, demanded free meals and public games. Gladiatorial shows, chariot races and athletic events were their passion. In the Byzantine Empire the rivalries of the Greens and the Blues in the hippodrome attained the importance of a major crisis.
Judging by the time and space allotted to them in the Press and television, football and baseball are the activities which today chiefly interest the public in Britain and the United States respectively. The heroes of declining nations are always the same—the athlete, the singer or the actor.
