PARIS has long been known as the City of Light, a testament to its beauty, elegance and civilisation.
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| Refugees have started setting up tents in Paris |
But now tragically parts of the French capital have been transformed into sprawling, squalid migrant camps.
Many central Parisian streets are lined with rows of filthy tents, put up by young men from Africa and Asia who think that Europe owes them a living.
This mess is a symbol of the deepening immigration disaster inflicted on the continent by treacherous, unpatriotic politicians.
The EU has made a fetish of open borders and multiculturalism. Now in the Paris makeshift settlements we can glimpse the destructive consequences of that ideology.
The squatter camps in the capital have expanded in recent days due partly to the closure of the Jungle in Calais.
But the Jungle in Calais was only allowed to develop in the first place because of the same mix of cowardice, political correctness and lethargy that is enabling the Parisian tents to mushroom.
Instead of showing robustness and determination when the Calais freeloaders first started to arrive, the French authorities were pathetically inert.
As the camp’s population reached more than 10,000, violence became endemic and businesses were destroyed.
Only when the continuing viability of the port was actually threatened did the French government finally act.
Yet what has been so intolerable about this saga has been the instinct of French politicians and pro-immigration groups to blame Britain for the shambles.
The Jungle campers were on French territory and had been waved through to Calais by French officials. Yet somehow, in the mindset of some Gallic buck-passers, it was our fault simply because the migrants had expressed a wish to live in England.
In the aftermath of the camp’s closure French leaders are at it again with claims that Britain must take in 1,500 “unaccompanied minors” who were living at the camp when it was closed.
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In a phone call to Theresa May on Saturday President Francois Hollande said that our Government must “play their part in subsequently welcoming these minors to the United Kingdom”.
His demand was echoed by other figures such as Xavier Bertrand, the president of the Calais regional council who argued that “we now need the British Government to implement and accelerate the juvenile transfer process to the UK. It is a question of dignity and humanity”.
From Paris more than 100 Left-wingers sent a pompous letter to Home Secretary Amber Rudd that stated: “We ask you to take your responsibilities and assume your moral duty by immediately organising their arrival.”
All this Gallic emotional blackmail is as offensive as it is absurd. For a start the attempt to tug at our heartstrings will no longer work after the fiasco last week over Britain’s previous acceptance of so-called “unaccompanied minors” from Calais, many of whom turned out to be hulking young men rather than vulnerable children.
The con trick played on the British public by the Calais agencies has permanently discredited the case for more assistance.
Just as importantly, none of this is any business of ours. No matter how many times the phrase “my uncle in Birmingham” is heard, most of these migrants have absolutely no connection with Britain.
If there really have been so many unaccompanied children at the camp then how on earth did they get there and why have the French done nothing about them until now?
It sounds like Gallic negligence on an epic scale. And they have the nerve to lecture us about our supposed “moral duty”.
French politicians are prize hypocrites. They want to focus attention on Britain to distract attention from their own spectacular failings, which have led to profound public disillusion in France with the entire political process.
Instead of berating us President Hollande should put his own house in order. Under his hopeless leadership France has completely lost its way.
Immigration is out of control. Militant Islam is a growing menace. France has become a land of fear and division.
The French political class has treated its own people with contempt, refusing to defend the integrity of the nation or the fabric of society. As the Parisian squatter camps demonstrate, a grasping culture of entitlement now pervades in migrant circles, fomented by the self-serving politicians and media.
It used to be held that the right to claim asylum was based on a genuine fear of persecution or death.
Now the fashionable definition of a refugee is so ridiculously wide that it is applied to anyone “fleeing poverty”.
Given that there are around 1.3billion living in severe poverty around the world that label offers scope for an unrelenting deluge of new arrivals.
It is a flood that will only accelerate under the auspices of the EU, to which French politicians remain absurdly attached despite the damage that Brussels is inflicting with its addiction to mass immigration and its hatred of traditional nationhood.
The founding father of the European project was Frenchman Jean Monnet, as was Jacques Delors, the architect of the European Union.
At least the British public had the sense to vote for freedom through Brexit. The French electorate will never be allowed that chance and so the nightmare of disintegration will only accelerate.
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/leo-mckinstry/726911/French-immigration-Francois-Hollande-Calais-Paris-Brexit
