Are Muslim Immigrants In Europe A ‘Boon To Taxpayers’?

by Hugh Fitzgerald

The UN is trying to convince the countries of Europe that Muslim immigration is, taken all in all, a Good Thing. It may even prove, so it is being claimed, to be a “boon to taxpayers.” The story of one such effort in the U.K., is here.

Record numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the English Channel are “not a threat” to Britain, and could even be a boon for taxpayers, the United Nations (UN) has claimed.

Speaking to the Commons Home Affairs Committee on Wednesday, representatives from the international body argued that Britain should open new channels that would allow many more low and no-skilled third world migrants to enter the country legally in order to deter individuals from paying people traffickers.

How’s that for strategy? In order to defeat the traffickers, just bring in, and for free, those would-be immigrants who, for a fee, the traffickers help to smuggle in. The U.K. government should fling its doors wide open, and let all who want to come in do so, as a way to stop people traffickers from making a living. It’s akin to those who argue that we should legalize all drugs as the best way to stop drug traffickers from profiting. What’s wrong with this picture? What’s wrong is that the whole point should be not just to stop illegal traffickers from making money (though that should certainly be done), but to ensure that these migrants do not gain entry to the U.K. There is, of course, another way to stop the people traffickers than that of letting all the economic migrants in who would otherwise be paying their traffickers to smuggle them in. That is to pour more ships, sailors, and money into intercepting the boatloads of would-be migrants, arresting the traffickers and bringing them to the U.K. to be tried and imprisoned (and their boats confiscated or sunk), while the people they were transporting should be taken into custody, held in well-guarded detention camps (perhaps on one of the Channel Islands), until they can be flown back to their countries of origin, having been told that they are forever barred from entering the U.K. Keeping illegal migrants out is possible; it’s a question of national will and allocation of resources. Why has Boris Johnson, for example, allowed this recent upsurge in boats with migrants to land in the U.K., instead of imitating Matteo Salvini, who, when he was Interior Minister of Italy, strictly enforced a policy of refusing to let these boats land, implacably turned them out to sea, and did, in fact, cause illegal immigration to plummet in Italy? It’s a question of will.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) representative in the UK, Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor, told MPs that the thousands of people who have broken into Britain in recent months were not a problem.

How can Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor be so certain that the “thousands of people who have broken into Britain” recently have not been a problem? Does she know where they live, and how they have interacted with the English population? Does she know what the locals think? Are they quite satisfied with their new neighbors, or have they found them to be cause for disquiet? And as for those Muslim immigrants, what has been the cost to the taxpayer of their presence? They are living, one presumes, in free housing supplied by the government. Do they treat their housing well, or do they manage – one hears such stories — to destroy much of it? They are receiving free health care from the NHS (National Health Service), as well, though they have never contributed to it. Are there any unusual costs to the NHS associated with these Muslim immigrants? Yes, there are. For example, congenital conditions, very expensive to treat, occur much more frequently in Muslim populations, because of the frequency of cousin-marriages in Muslim societies. Their gene-pool is too limited. And the cost to the educational system? These immigrant children swell the student rolls, putting a burden on school budgets, with a need for more classrooms, more teachers, more supplies, more school buses, more of everything. Muslim children – in fact whole families — require extra help, in learning the language; instructors have to be paid. Muslim migrants receive unemployment benefits (even without ever having been employed), and family allowances (which increase with each child, and Muslims tend to have large families). But Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor is certain: no problems, nothing to worry about with these Muslim economic migrants, everything is copacetic, hunky-dory, just great.

Instead, she insisted that the only “dangers” of the situation were risks to the lives of migrants travelling across the Channel in dinghies, along with “a different sort of risk”, which she said was critical media reporting of the phenomenon….

Apparently, media reports that are critical of these illegal migrants, and their negative effects when they settle in the U.K., are to be deplored as constituting an unacceptable “risk,” presumably psychic, to the migrants whose well-being should be our sole concern. Pagliuchi-Lor does not ask whether that critical reporting is accurate; all she cares about is that it is a “risk” that these economic migrants, who apparently deserve all our sympathy — though on what theory is entirely unclear — should not have to endure. There is a clear desire on her part that this “critical media reporting” be stopped.

These are the two risks to the migrants according to Pagliuchi-Lor — drowning at sea, and the “risk” of a bad press. But what about the risks to British well-being? Are there not dangers there that Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor fails to recognize? Has she not heard about the Muslim grooming gangs, and the tens of thousands of their victims, young English girls who were seduced, drugged, raped, used as sex slaves, in some cases for years, each one abused by dozens, or even hundreds, of Muslim men? Has she heard nothing about the rise in the crime rate in the U.K., especially for violent crimes, such as rape and murder, due to the influx of Muslim migrants? Has she heard nothing about the terrorist attacks in the U.K. – the 7/7/2005 attack on the London buses and the Underground, the dismemberment of Drummer Lee Rigby, the vehicular homicide on Westminster Bridge? Is she aware that in 2017 the British government declared that there were 23,000 Jihadis (there are more now) in the U.K. who constituted a threat to public safety, and of that number, 3,000 were under round-the-clock monitoring and surveillance, each one requiring at least three “minders,” at great cost to the Treasury?

“The people that you will find on the boats are pretty much the same you would have found otherwise on the back of a lorry. There is no real difference — the main risk is to themselves with regards to the danger of the crossing itself.”…

And why are those people who enter the U.K. smuggled in “on the back of a lorry,” considered by Pagliuchi-Lor not to pose any danger? Whence her assurance, when all the evidence suggests that plenty of those who arrive on the backs of lorries (trucks) are just as dangerous to the well-being of the native British as those who come by sea on dinghies? The real distinction is not between dinghies by sea and lorries by land, but between Muslim and non-Muslim migrants. The Muslim migrants arrive, having had anti-Infidel views hammered into them since childhood. They know, from the Qur’an, that they are the “best of peoples” (3:110) and non-Muslims the “most vile of created beings.” (98:6) They know, too, that “Muhammad is the apostle of Allah. Those who follow him are ruthless to unbelievers, merciful to one another.” (48:29) These verses they have heard, recited, memorized, over and over again. Why should we ignore this troubling evidence, as pollyannish Pagliuchi-Lor does, and would like us to do so as well? I think we should take seriously what is in the Qur’an, and taken to heart by Believers. Pagliuchi-Lor apparently does not. But on this point, Muslims agree with us.

Pagliuchi-Lor wants to demoralize the British, to let them know that “there is nothing they can do” about these illegal immigrants except take them in. They can’t be sent back to France, she declares – but in fact some immigrants, starting in mid-August — have been sent back from the U.K., by plane, both to France and Germany, countries where they had first asked for asylum, but then decided to head for the U.K. in order to take advantage of even more government benefits and what immigrants apparently believe to be a more welcoming atmosphere.

Pagliuchi-Lor and Vincent Cochetel, the UNHCR’s special envoy for illegal immigration to Europe via the Mediterranean route, said Britain was a popular destination for migrants due to its reputation as a “champion in terms of multiculturalism”, and called for the government to create “safe, legal routes” for migration.

By what right does this U.N. apparatchik (and her associate, Special Envoy Vincent Cochetel) presume to lecture the British government on immigration and what, according to her, London “must” do? The U.K. government is under no obligation to take in a single immigrant; it has a right to choose, too, to restrict admission to those whom it has reason to believe can be integrated successfully into the larger society. That would obviously not include those who have been taught that the British, as Infidels, are “the most vile of created beings,” or that they, the Muslims, who are “the best of peoples,” must “fight,” “kill,” “smite at the necks of,” “strike terror in the hearts of,” Infidels.

Currently, family reunification rules in the UK are “quite restrictive”, Pagliuchi-Lor complained, explaining that the government limits claims to members of the nuclear family, such as parents and children.

Again, here is Pagliuchi-Lor having the gall to scold the U.K. for deciding that “family reunification rules” should be limited to the nuclear family. Is she unaware of how many distant relatives have been brought into Western countries in the name of “family reunification” – all those sisters and brothers (with all of their families), aunts and uncles (and all of their families), their cousins (first, second, third) of both husband and wife (or of plural wives), so that unless the family unit is defined as one husband, one wife, and their children, many dozens of potential “family members” will have managed to be brought in, all supposed “relatives” of a migrant who has already been admitted? There are frequently no DNA tests, nor in-person interviewing, and often, it is mere assertion that someone is a relative that is accepted.

In the U.S., as Charles Fillinger, a retired Customs and Immigration Enforcement Officer, has written:

A shockwave rippled through the overseas P-3 program in 2008 when pilot DNA testing revealed massive, almost universal, 100 percent fraud in claims of familial relationships. It was the greatest refugee fraud crisis in immigration history, and understandably led to the suspension of the overseas reunification program. It only restarted four years later, in 2012, with a permanent DNA screening requirement.

Nota bene: Until DNA screening was introduced in the U.S.2012, “pilot DNA testing revealed massive, almost universal, 100 percent fraud in claims of familial relationships.” In the U.S (which Fillinger was writing about), none of those claimed as family members in fact were such. Many of them paid off others to claim them as relatives. The program in the U.S. now has DNA screening, but it is still rare in Europe. In the U.K. such screening operated from 2009 to 2011, then mysteriously stopped. Was it because so much fraud was uncovered that the government was embarrassed, but did not dare to send everyone back who had been fraudulently admitted? Now the immigration authorities in the U.K. are again relying on mere asseverations by migrants that so-and-so is a “relative.” The result has naturally again resulted in massive fraud. That is why the U.K. decided it would limit family reunification to the nuclear families. No more of those claimed “cousins,” “uncles,” and “aunts” who have appeared in such suspect profusion.

The UN “has been advocating for a somewhat broader definition of family,” she said, before alleging that a huge expansion of chain migration would “not be a massive burden” on Britain and its welfare system and public services.

This woman needs to be read the riot act. How in god’s name does she know whether “a huge expansion” of chain migration — where a single migrant can bring in dozens more of those “relatives” he (or she) claims – will be a “massive burden” or not? Before 2012, and the introduction of DNA testing, chain migration was a massive burden for the American government. Why would it not be an even greater burden for the British government, which is many times poorer than that of the Americans? What does Pagliuchi-Lor know about the British welfare system? Does she have some data to buttress her claim that chain migration would not be a “massive burden” on the British welfare system and public services? Won’t more public housing have to be built? Won’t more teachers, including language teachers, have to be hired, and more schools be built, and school buses bought? What about the National Health Service? How much more will be spent on Muslim immigrants than on ordinary patients? It is well known that in Muslim societies, marriage to relatives – cousins – is considered desirable. In such societies, where the level of trust is low, it makes sense to encourage such marriages among relatives (who, presumably, can be trusted), which also keeps property within a family. But these cousin-marriages also have a great cost: the limited gene pool leads to much higher levels of congenital illnesses, that are particularly expensive to treat. That puts an extra burden on the NHS (National Health Service), about which Pagliuchi-Lor is almost certainly unaware. But the doctors and nurses at NHS, or at health services across Europe, are not.

Other ways Britain could reduce the number of people migrating illegally would be to open up legal pathways for unqualified, low-wage laborers from the third world to resettle in Britain, as well as with an expansion in “study visas,”the UNHCR representative said.

This is again her nostrum for reducing illegal migration: simply make legal what before was illegal, and you have, by sleight of word, decreased the number of illegal immigrants. Exactly how Britain would benefit from an influx of “unqualified, low wage laborers” is unclear. These are the very people who are most likely to permanently burden the welfare system. They are more in need of free or highly subsidized government housing, more likely to require large family allowances for food and utilities, more likely to need unemployment benefits, given how the demand for menial labor is often intermittent or seasonal. And it turns out that many of these Muslim migrants, though fit for nothing but such menial labor, are unwilling to engage in it; it’s beneath them. They know they deserve better. They are the “best of peoples,” after all. Farm work in Europe, for example, is now being done by Rumanians, Bulgarians, and other East Europeans, but not by Muslims from the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan.

However, she warned that politicians should “be realistic” and realise that massively expanding legal migration from the world’s poorest countries would not prevent illegal entry entirely, asserting that immigration to first world countries is set to soar.

Pagliuchi-Lor wants the peoples of the Western world to be fatalists, to be convinced that immigration from the third world is “set to soar” and there is nothing the first world countries can do about it. But she is wrong; some counties – such as Hungary – have been able to keep unwelcome immigration at an absolute minimum, practically at zero. It takes political agreement, so that all major parties are on board, as they are in Budapest, and an iron will, as Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban has displayed. In the summer of 2015, more than 390,000 asylum seekers, mostly Muslim, crossed the Serbian-Hungarian border and descended on the Keleti railway station in Budapest. For Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party, the arrival of those asylum seekers was not a humanitarian issue, but a Muslim invasion threatening the national security, social cohesion, and Christian identity of the Hungarian nation.

In the four years since that tsunami of Muslim migrants Orban, who had been horrified at the 2015 influx, has instituted a string of anti-immigrant actions and policies. For example, barbed wire fences were constructed to deter asylum seekers from entering Hungarian territory. Transit zones on the same Serbian-Hungarian border followed. Since the end of March 2017, anyone applying for asylum in Hungary can only do so from a transit zone and is detained there for the duration of the asylum procedure. Orban has also refused to accept the quota of immigrants that the E.U., in Brussels, has insisted be taken by Hungary, even though it was fewer than 1400. His government has criminalized assistance to unauthorized migrants by civil-society organizations and so-called “good samaritans.” Word has gotten out, and Muslims no longer attempt to enter Hungary. There is no reason why such strict measures could not be followed by other European countries, if their citizens feel, as many now do, that they are being swamped, against their will and at the behest of international organizations (the E.U., the U.N.), with Muslim migrants who are dramatically changing the tenor of life. More people in Europe are now willing to recognize that the large-scale presence of Muslims in their societies has created a situation that is far more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous for themselves, than would be the case without that large-scale presence. Having been relentlessly tarred with those all-purpose epithets “Islamophobic” and “racist,” an increasing number of Europeans are now inured to these absurd charges meant to shut down all criticism of Islam.

“The notion that any individual country can seal itself off” from mass, third world migration is “impractical and unrealistic”, she said.

Let’s see. It is “impractical and unrealistic,” the egregious Pagliuchi-Lor contends, for any country to try to seal itself off from mass migration. Does China count, or Japan, or South Korea? All three countries seem to have done quite well sealing themselves off from mass migration of any kind, and they are not embarrassed nor apologetic. Hungary has been the trail-blazer in Europe in managing to seal itself off from “third-world migration,” or, more exactly, from Muslim migration, and because of this, Victor Orban has soared in popularity. Other European countries that have been determined to similarly preserve their national identity by sealing themselves off from Muslim migrants include Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia, Latvia, the Czech Republic, and Estonia. Apparently they don’t find their immigration policies to be “impractical and unrealistic.”

Countries that were formerly tolerant and welcoming to immigrants, because of their experience with Muslim migrants, have become far less so. Italy is one example. But as Oriana Fallaci has pointed out, the Italians – once so naively open and welcoming – eventually become disgusted with the Muslim (Somali) immigrants who deliberately defecated inside churches, and urinated on such artistic treasures as Ghiberti’s “Gates of Heaven” at the Baptistery In Florence. They became infuriated, too, with the sight of so many unemployed Muslims living contentedly on the dole without seeking work, but supplementing their welfare benefits with street robberies, house burglaries, and the drug trade. It was also maddening to see Muslim immigrants being given government housing before Italian families who had been waiting for years for such housing.. Matteo Salvini’s popularity as a politician, which reached its zenith in 2019, was a direct result of his anti-Muslim immigrant stand, and his willingness to refuse to let boatloads from Libya offload their human cargo.

Denmark is the outstanding example of this sea-change in views, after its own unhappy experience with Muslim migrants. Denmark has always been regarded as the most tolerant of societies and for a long time it allowed in Muslim migrants with little opposition. There are now 320,000 Muslims, more than 5% of the population, in Denmark. But Danes have been mugged by experience. A Muslim terrorist tried in 2015 to enter the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen where a bas mitzvah was taking place; he killed a Jewish guard but was prevented from getting into the building where he might have massacred the assembled crowd. There have been seven terrorist plots by Muslims in Denmark in recent years. And Danes were aghast at the hysterical reaction of Muslims in Denmark after the newspaper Jyllands-Posten published some Muhammad cartoons. Some Danish Muslims even toured Muslim countries trying to enlist support for a boycott of Danish goods, which was in fact. instituted. All these plots, attacks, and boycotts left a deep impression on Danes.

In response to a question on whether it would be more cost-effective for Britain to help refugees in conflict areas rather than resettle them here, Pagliuchi-Lor claimed she had “seen a study” which showed that migrants contributed more to the UK treasury than they cost in services.

She had “seen a study”? Oh, that’s okay then, that should settle it? Just how much of her nonsense are we expected to stand? The study Pagliuchi-Lor saw undoubtedly was not of Muslim migrants to the U.K., but either of migrants from other E.U. countries, who would have been almost entirely non-Muslims, or of both non-Muslims and Muslim immigrants. It is true that some migrants – those from fellow European countries, as well as from the United States, Canada, and Australia — do “contribute more to the UK treasury than they cost in services.” But the meretricious Pagliuchi-Lor wants us to believe that all immigration results in such welcome outcomes. It’s completely false. She does not dare admit that there no studies, none, that show that Muslim migrants “contribute more to the treasury than they cost in services” either in the U.K., or anywhere else in Europe.

In fact, EU-sponsored, pro-immigration researchers from University College London found that migration from outside Europe cost British taxpayers £118 billion between 1995 and 2011.

That’s about 8.5 billion pounds, or more than 11 billion USD each year, that those “outside Europe” (which in the U.K., overwhelmingly means Muslims from Pakistan, the Middle East, and North Africa) have cost U.K. taxpayers. And the figures about the cost to British taxpayers since 2011, with the constant increase in Muslim numbers, have only gone way up. In the FY 2014-2015, non-EEA migrants represented a net fiscal cost of £15.6bn, or more than 20 billion dollars in one year. In FY2016/17 non-EEA migrants were a net fiscal cost of £9.6 bn, or 12.5 billion dollars.

Yet Pagliuchi-Lor unblushingly informs us that she has “seen a study” (apparently, she’d only “seen” one study) that suggested that “migrants” (not “Muslim migrants”) contribute “more to the Treasury than they cost in services.”

Studies from across Europe have come to similar conclusions, finding that third world migrants and their descendants are significantly more likely to be unemployed or in low-paid work than indigenous populations.

The UN’s call for Britain to expand opportunities for chain migration comes days after NGOs, along with a cadre of more than 70 so-called celebrities, made similar demands for the government to greatly boost immigration from the world’s poorest countries through family reunification.

NGOs are in the business of undercutting the nation-state. Their loyalty is to their chosen trans-national cause: human rights, climate change, racial equality, increasing diversity in the work place, fighting islamophobia, and so much more. They do not care about, they are not concerned with, such things as the preservation of national identity, nor with the cohesion of a nation-state’s society. For them people are fungible, and potentially all alike. And who wants differences, which only cause trouble, when differences can be ironed out, and everyone can be the same? All people deserve to be admitted wherever they want to live. National borders are a grotesque thing of the prejudiced past, or should be. Only people like Trump build walls. It is a crime to shut the door to any of those who want in – and so very many do want in. Forget about the possibility – or impossibility — of integration into the host society. Forget about the incredible costs incurred in providing for these economic migrants, eager to take full advantage of every conceivable benefit they can – free housing, free medical care, free education, family allowances, unemployment benefits, the works. They are poor. We are rich. Therefore we have a moral obligation to let in as many of them into our countries as want to, and to support them in as many ways as we can.. If these immigrants place an extra burden on us, so be it. We’ve had things too good; now it’s our turn to suffer.

But those same people we let in are not in any hurry to seek employment when they can live far better than they ever did in their countries of origin, and now can do so without working. Never mind the disruptive effects of introducing into one people’s midst another people, who have been commanded, in their holy book, to “fight,” and to “kill,” and to “smite at the necks of”, and to “strike terror in the hearts of” that same host population. (See Qur’an 2:191-193, 3:151, 4:89, 8:12, 8:60, 9:5, 9:29, 47:4.) What does any of that matter to the NGO whose bureaucrats think that the poor of the third world should be widely distributed, in apparently unlimited quantities, across the rich first world, as some weird kind of amends-making? If Europeans are better off than the people in Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq, Algeria, Libya and dozens of other Muslim countries, then by that fact alone, those Europeans owe the unfortunate Somalis, Pakistanis, Iraqis, etc. a living. The rich West must pay for the unforgivable sin of being better off.

How has that Muslim migration been working out? Not well.

Let’s start with housing. The public housing that Muslim migrant families live in, at little or no cost, soon disintegrates under the “stewardship” of those Muslim families. This has been the experience in the U.K., France, Germany, Sweden. The housing is not destroyed, but subject to a kind of systematic mistreatment and neglect. After all, it’s not the migrants’ worry: the housing they live in belongs to the state, and the state will pay to repair it. Many Muslims come from countries where there is no modern plumbing; they are not used to Western toilets. Some are reported to defecate not in, but beside, toilets. This likely has something to do with not wishing to violate the Muslim prohibition on defecating in flowing water. Some of these estate residents – see Tower Hamlets in London, for one example – negligently pile up their garbage, attracting rats and other vermin. Some damage the furniture supplied with their flats – after all, it’s not theirs, so why should they care? Some use the stairwells as urinals, and others use them as playgrounds. Some scrawl graffiti on all their walls, or knock holes in them. However clean it started out, this public housing soon becomes, and remains, a mess, disheartening for the public housing authorities who find themselves having to constantly repair, at great cost, what has been damaged by the indifferent tenants..

Then there is health care, which is free in the U.K. Muslim migrants arrive mostly from countries where the medical care is poor. Many thus have conditions that were left untreated, or badly treated in their home countries, and it becomes the responsibility of the doctors of the NHS to set things right. Because of that prior substandard medical care (just imagine what treatment is offered in hospitals in Somalia, or Pakistan), many of the Muslim migrants have untreated conditions that become a severe burden to the National Health Service. As we noted above, in Muslim societies, where the level of trust is low, families – it seems especially from Pakistan — try to encourage marriages to cousins (consanguineous marriages) in order to keep property within the family. This has both health and budgetary consequences: with the limited gene-pool, the incidence of expensive congenital illnesses is much higher for Muslims than for non-Muslims. The cost of treating such patients, therefore, is also much higher.

Muslim migrants make extra demands on the schools in which they enroll. There is, most obviously, the need to hire extra teachers of English and of “acculturation” to help the Muslim students fit in. Muslim male students are more violent and disruptive in classes, which becomes a problem for harried teachers and uneasy fellow (but non-Muslim) students. Teachers have reported being physically threatened by Muslim students. There have also been reports, in both the U.K. and France, of Muslim students refusing to study certain subjects, such as European history (irrelevant to Muslim concerns), the Crusades (too friendly to Christians), the Holocaust (likely to elicit sympathy for Jews), making it difficult for the set national curriculum to be followed.

Muslim males find Western culture difficult to comprehend, and tend to despise it. Surely that goes a long way to explaining the difficulty Muslims experience when told they should integrate into a larger society created by, and mostly consisting of, “the most vile of created beings” (Qur’an 98:6). And might the kind of aggressive and hostile attitude that many Muslims exhibit be explained by such Qur’anic verses? Or by others that instruct Muslims not to take Christians and Jews as friends, for “they are friends only with each other” (5:51)?

We keep pretending that what Muslims are taught about Infidels should be of no concern, it doesn’t matter, “things will work out” in the end. But these verses do matter. You cannot expect someone who is endlessly told that as a Muslim, he belongs to the “best of peoples” while Infidels are “the most vile of created beings,” will not be deeply affected. You cannot ignore how often in the Qur’an Believers are told to make war – violent Jihad – on the Infidels. You cannot ignore Muhammad’s insistence in the Hadith that “war is deceit” and “I have been made victorious through terror.”

Muslims pay attention to these Qur’anic verses and Hadith stories. So should we. And so should – do we dare to hope? – that maddeningly naïve and impossibly presumptuous international scold, Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor.

First published in Jihad Watch.