The Integration problems in Western Europe

Almost all European countries have tremendous problems with integrating their citizens from exotic origins.

How can we, with all the knowledge we possess, all the wise strategic ways we use to solve the most difficult enigma‘s of our time not have a suitable solution to resolve this very little problem?

While reflecting on this problem myself, I came up with three fundamental problems most western countries have, and some of the greatest mistakes these countries make, leading them to some unsolved bottlenecks we now face.

 

o   We tend to want to ignore constitutional laws when dealing with aliens in western countries, we tend to want to understand their cultures (even when the alien is born here in the west), we do our best to tell them; “look, we understand quite well that your mischief’s are tolerated there where you originally came from, we get that!” we do our best to understand their resiliencies to integrate.

 -Take for example a city like Utrecht where I live; here we create a municipality locket in mosques to make it easy for aliens to come to report their eventual problems or consult.

-In Amsterdam, there are theaters that reserved some sits only for Muslim women, because their religion forbids them to sit near men in general.

-In hospitals almost all over the Netherlands and else where, immigrant men refuse male physicians to treat their spouses even for injuries on their hands or toes, something I find very striking.

We tend to want to understand all these flaws and let go.

 

o   My second point of concern is; when governments try to take into consideration the origins of aliens, authorities in fact are talking about the origins of Moroccans, Algerian and/or Turks. I have in principle nothing against people originating from the above-cited countries, but in countries with a variety of minorities like those in Western Europe, it seems to me that there is a problem of ignorance here.

Some say the reason this is done is because these immigrants are the biggest minorities in those countries!!! So when you make the law taking into account some factors of the Moroccan society for example, I, who originate from Cameroon, would have to live with that!! I would even have to be happy with it, because we are talking here about advantages of the multicultural society. So, what happens in 2050 when some other minority communities grow to one million or more citizens? Will these countries make new laws to adapt to the new situation, and if so, where is the limit?

 

o   The third point is the fact that by treating aliens differently, you risk alienating the own western youth by making the society think that they don’t have those kinds of problems. Take a problem like home and civil education of kids; every debate we have had in the Netherlands about bad educated children has been about the ways aliens educate their kids, which in fact is a big problem in immigrant communities we have to acknowledge, and so doing, we try to find suitable solutions to solve them. The question we also ought to be asking though is; do autochthonous children have educational problems as well? Do some autochthonous parents have difficulties finding to right ways to educate their kids? How big is this group of bad educated kids? The answer is; absolutely, the group is big enough to worry about.

 

I am not naïve; I fully understand how complex these integration problems are. I am an alien myself, I left my country at the age of 20, came to live here fully aware of the realities. We all leave our countries for some reason(s), we either don’t like our living conditions, we flee, we want to improve our economical situation and many other reasons not mentioned. One way or another, we go to somewhere we believe it’s better. I live here in the Netherlands for quite a while now. Nobody can separate me from my Cameroonian culture, in fact I feel completely free to take part in any types of cultural activity I wish and which are within the laws we are all abiding by. But to be fully functional in this society I believe it’s wrong to impose my cultural convictions to the society.

My experience is that when you are fully integrated to a society with other cultural believes; this society in return begins to show some interest in your own cultural convictions; when you resist, it resists you as well.

The authorities in Europe just have to tell the aliens; these are our laws, period! There is no problem practicing our cultural convictions at home or with other aliens who share the same convictions like we do, but I find it a little bit pretentious to impose it to the society we want to belong to.

Governments who create room for these types of practices only enlarge the integration problems, because the less we are integrated, the less our chances to be part of the society, the less our jobs chances are in the society, the less our socio-economical situation gets and the more we ruin and damage our own lives. Don’t forget what the Yiddish proverb says: "Show a dog a finger, and he wants the whole hand."

Ed'son ---

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