Bell for a Thorough Reset of Europe, Including Its Migration Policies

The electoral victory of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and the rise in popularity of Germany’s AfD indicate that migration issues will be an important or even the most important topic of the European elections next year. Just like all the upcoming national elections, including the Croatian parliamentary elections. Wilders’ victory and the AfD’s rise in popularity are merely a continuation of the political trend that has affected the countries most exposed to (illegal) migrations (Denmark, Sweden, Italy…), which the current European elites perceive as their existential threat. However, they are unable to recognize the causes in their previous misguided policies. The usual scapegoat has been found in the – unsuccessful integration of migrants.

However, was that integration even (ever) possible after European immigration policy has been reduced to a chaos managed by non-European, often hostile entities (states, religious movements, smuggling lobbies, globalist lobbies)? Is it possible to integrate those who do not come to integrate at all, for example, those who arrive instrumentalized by various Islamist movements? And especially, can the creators of various integration programs, mainly colored by globalist-green political hues, whose actual goal is not to familiarize migrants with their diversity, but to implement their political agenda, achieve this? The answer is: three times no. On such foundations, integration is not possible.

Selective (not) discriminatory

As a correction, today’s Europe could learn something from previous immigration policies. It is not the first time that developed European countries need immigrant labor. For instance, Germany alone ‘imported’ about 14 million foreign workers from Turkey, Southern and Southeastern Europe, including the then Yugoslavia, between 1955 and 1973. But ‘it imported those that its labor market needed, not those sent by Erdoğan or organized human traffickers. And it developed selective integration policies for them.

Thus, for example, Italians or Spaniards had some advantage over Croats, Serbs, or Poles in achieving full integration and obtaining citizenship, while the most numerous Turks were at the back. Of those 14 million, about three million migrants remained in Germany, mostly fully integrated. And those who returned to their home countries with incentive measures brought some new values: money, pensions, work habits, know-how… In today’s Europe, such a selective approach is politically incorrect to even mention. It is discriminatory. Do you remember, after all, how the otherwise quite popular Radimir Čačić fared in mainstream media about ten years ago after he mentioned in a television interview that Croatia should give preference to those coming from similar, Christian backgrounds when importing labor?

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It is not the first time that modern Europe has experience with war crises and refugees. Only Germany received about 350,000 war refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s. But all of them waited for refugee status in neighboring countries, mostly in refugee camps in Croatia. They did not cross borders in waves, without documents, without identity, without verification, equipped with money of unknown origin. And immediately after the war, almost all were returned to their home countries, without unnecessary whys. Although there would have been work for them. Such an approach would today be declared pure discrimination.

Not to Stay at the Tail

And finally, such a Europe, which has renounced its fundamental values, including control of state borders and immigration control, as well as its Christian roots, cannot comprehend migration in its reality at all. In expert analyses, you encounter astonishment at how foreign doctors have integrated in Sweden or Germany, including those who fled from Syria or Iraq. Yet, Islamic State fighters who disguised themselves as refugees after its defeat did not integrate equally. That Europe recognizes a security threat when Putin lands several hundred migrants from Somalia and Eritrea near the Finnish border. And it does not recognize it when Erdoğan sends hundreds of thousands, and al-Thani sponsors.

In fact, the European problem is not the migrants, but its bureaucratized establishment lacking leadership, competence, and vision. Geert Wilders is not the solution, but he is a wake-up call. And a bell for a thorough reset of Europe, including its migration policies. For Croatia, it is important not to veer into extremes, but also not to remain at the tail of the trend of this European political awakening. Given our geographical position, we are already at the tail of the EU.