Will the World Come To Europe?

by Ross Douthat

Sept. 8th, 2015

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/08/will-the-world-come-to-europe/?comments#permid=16024402

And your point is?...

You seem to implicitly argue for the Fence/Wall solutions of Hungary and Trump - b.t.w., perhaps Mr. Trump should travel to Hungary to give them his invaluable advice on how to build a WALL - not just a puny fence - and have someone else, in their case probably the Greeks, pay for it.

There have been huge migrations of populations in the past, and what we consider the "homogeneous, national identities" of nation states today are the results of these past migrations and mixing and assimilation of one culture into another. The US is turning more and more Latino, which is happening more or less naturally - yes, there are tensions with people like Trump fanning the flames, but it will continue to happen. How well we deal with it is up to us, and our political elite (not a comforting thought when one looks at the bevy of GOP candidates).

The same goes for Europe - Germany, in spite of its archaic and counter-productive "immigration" laws, has assimilated large numbers of Italians, Greeks and Turks, more or less peacefully, originally to satisfy its needs for labor to fuel the "Economic Miracle". There are demographic trends in Germany (and much of Europe) which require immigration and assimilation of "foreign" cultures. Again, how peacefully that happens is up to the people and their political elite. 

Let's hope for the best, because this process cannot be stopped!

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One more comment on this topic: watching the Euro Soccer Qualifying games, it is interesting to see the names on the various national team players, and how many are "foreign" names: Yesterday the German national team, and today the Swiss.

Admittedly, this is not entirely representative, but interesting none-the-less..

Integration of "foreign" nationalities and cultures is certainly possible, and even desirable.

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I guess I'm having a discussion with myself :)
But anyway, one more point.

The current estimate is that 800,000 refugees will arrive in Germany this year (official estimate); unofficially this estimate has already been expanded to 1,000,000.
If one applied that to the US, it would be the equivalent of 4,000,000 "refugees" arriving in the US this year.

I hesitate to imagine how the US would react to that kind of an influx.