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Europeans Fleeing Eurabia

by Daniel Pipes
October 10, 2004
updated Jul 27, 2008

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The Miami Herald has an important article today, "French Jews Escape to United States," by Elinor J. Brecher, giving example after example of French Jews who gave up on the Hexagon and moved to southern Florida because of their fears of the growingly bellicose Muslim minority in France. But the real significance of this exodus lies less in the relatively small numbers of Jews making the centuries-old move from the Old World to the New, as it is their preparing the way for others to do the same.

Assuming current trends continue – an increasingly domineering Muslim population, pensioners demanding higher and higher subsidies, the Christian faith ever more marginalized – it is easy to foresee millions of Europeans "escaping" to the United States and perhaps other countries, such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. When added to the already divergent demographic trends (lots of American babies, disappearing Europe ones), this emigration will further propel American predominance. (October 10, 2004)

Dec. 11, 2004 update: Evans-Pritchard reports in London's Daily Telegraph about a significant emigration movement out of Holland, perhaps the first of its sort.

Escaping the stress of clogged roads, street violence and loss of faith in Holland's once celebrated way of life, the Dutch middle classes are leaving the country in droves for the first time in living memory. The new wave of educated migrants are quietly voting with their feet against a multicultural experiment long touted as a model for the world, but increasingly a warning of how good intentions can go wrong. Australia, Canada and New Zealand are the pin-up countries for those craving the great outdoors and old-fashioned civility. …

More people left the Netherlands in 2003 than arrived, ending a half-century cycle of surging immigration that has turned a tight-knit Nordic tribe into a multi-ethnic mosaic with three million people of foreign roots out of 16 million. Almost one million are Muslims, mostly Turks and Moroccan-Berbers. In Rotterdam, 47 per cent of the city's population is of foreign origin. While asylum claims have plunged, the exodus is accelerating, reaching 13,313 net outflow in the first half of 2004. Many retiring workers are moving to the south of France, but a growing bloc leaving the country appears to be educated, working families. …

Unlike most earlier waves of migration to the new world, this one is not driven by penury. The Netherlands has a per capita income higher than Germany or Britain, and 4.7 per cent unemployment. "None of my clients is leaving for economic reasons. You can't get a visa anyway if you haven't got a work record," said Frans Buysse[, the head of a private immigration consultancy]. Europe's leader for much of the last century in social experiments, Holland may now be pointing to the next cultural revolution: bourgeois exodus.

The Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh murders seem to be the motor force here; and if two murders can spur such a shift in opinion in the Netherlands, clearly similar acts of violence can have a similar effect in other European countries.

Dec. 27, 2004 update: Christopher Caldwell of the Weekly Standard glosses the recent surge in Dutch emigration this way:

London's Daily Telegraph, citing immigration experts and government statistics, reported a net outflow of 13,000 people from Holland in the first six months of 2004, the first such deficit in half a century. One must treat this statistic carefully—it could be an artifact of an aging population in which many are retiring to warmer places. But it could also be the beginning of something resembling the American suburban phenomenon of "white flight," occurring at the level of an entire country

Feb. 12, 2005 update: According to Filip Dewinter, the leader of Vlaams Belang, Belgium's Flemish anti-immigrant party, about 4,000 to 5,000 Flemish residents are leaving Antwerp every year, even as 5,000 to 6,000 non-European immigrants arrive in the city each year. Within ten years, he expects that people of non-European backgrounds will number over one-third of the city's population.

Feb. 14, 2005 update: "More people left Holland in 2003 than arrived," informs the Daily Telegraph in an article on emigration from Holland, "Dutch join the migrant exodus to Australia."

Feb. 27, 2005 update: "More Dutch Plan to Emigrate as Muslim Influx Tips Scales" reads the blunt New York Times headline over a story by Marlise Simons. It recounts how the murder of Theo van Gogh led to an emigration specialist being "inundated" with messages. "There was a big panic, a flood of people saying they wanted to leave the country." An agency that handles paperwork for departing Dutch was had four times the normal rate of contacts following the murder. Those leaving tell of a general pessimism about their country and about the social tensions that accompanied the waves of mostly Muslim immigrants. The emigrants tend to leave for Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Diplomats from those three countries confirmed the interest, saying they had been "swamped" with inquiries. The reporter notes statistics pointing to "a quickening flight of the white middle class." In 1999, nearly 30,000 native Dutch moved elsewhere, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. For 2004, the provisional figure is close to 40,000. "It's definitely been picking up in the past five years," said a demographer working at the bureau.

March 3, 2005 update: Ha'aretz reports today on a survey that finds "60,000 French Jews want to move to Israel." Arik Cohen of Bar-Ilan University reached this conclusion by giving questionnaires to the 125,000 French Jewish tourists who visited Israel in the summer of 2004. Of this huge sample, 52 percent said they see their future in Israel. Half of those aged 15-18 said they had personally experienced instances of anti-Semitism in the past four years. A third of the youth said they are considering immigration to Israel in the near future. The findings were presented at a press conference in Jerusalem inaugurating AMI, an organization of French Jewry for increasing Jewish immigration from France.

May 4, 2005 update: Radio Nederlands informs us that in 1999, nearly 30,000 native Dutch emigrated and in 2004, that figure had gone up to nearly 50,000. These are not just any emigrants but, as the director of a migration consultancy bureau in Amsterdam, Grant King, notes, "Most of our applicants are in high-paying, good, solid positions here - they are not the unemployed. They are mostly middle-class Dutch people with college or university degrees. … The problem for the Netherlands is that the ones that they don't want to lose are the ones that are leaving."

Henri Beunders, professor of history, media and culture at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, notes the role of the Theo van Gogh murder: "The assassin of Theo van Gogh released not only anger but a lot of fear of fanatic Muslims and random violence. It was new for Dutch people to feel physical insecurity, because we are living in a very small country where you can come across anybody." One emigration consultant, Frans Buysse, received four times the usual level of hits on his website in the weeks after the killing of van Gogh.

Asked if the Dutch government should worry about this emgiration, Beunders says no, that immigrants to the Netherlands will replace the Dutch who leave. He concedes only that "It will make things a bit more complicated because you have to integrate an even greater number of foreigners into your own country, with all the very complicated regulation systems we have in this country." He also wants to see benefit in this exchange: "Growing mobility, on the other hand, is also a good sign of the growing unification of Europe and understanding of people - I hope." In like spirit, the radio reporter, Sarah Johnson, speculates that "Europe's pioneer for much of the last century in social experiments, it seems the Netherlands may now be pointing to the next cultural revolution: the bourgeois exodus."

Comment: It's all very well to put a cheery face on a terrible development, but let's hope no one is fooling himself about the implications for the future of Dutch culture.

May 11, 2005 update: The Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) issued a report today that insists that immigration and radical Islam are hardly part of the picture at all. NIDI found that 112,000 people left the Netherlands last year and 90,000 came to live in it. The profile of those planning to leave confirms other reports (well educated, ages 35 to 44, good income) but everything else is suspicious. First, the NIDI report finds that 250,000 adults are thinking of emigrating and only 20,000 have serious plans to leave – this at a time when 50,000 Dutch left the country in 2004. Second, the notion that 80 percent of the potential emigrants find Holland too densely populated and 77 percent of them dislike the "Dutch mentality" (whatever that is) makes little sense, as both these conditions obtained 5 and 10 years ago, when emigration was trivial.

Comment: This report appears to be another manifestation of denial that Holland is undergoing the throes of deep change.

Nov. 8, 2005 update: Mark Steyn considers the French riots and observes:

If the insurgents emerge emboldened, what next? In five years' time, there will be even more of them, and even less resolve on the part of the French state. That, in turn, is likely to accelerate the demographic decline. Europe could face a continent-wide version of the "white flight" phenomenon seen in crime-ridden American cities during the 1970s, as Danes and Dutch scram to America, Australia or anywhere else that will have them.

Nov. 19, 2005 update: Romain Barthel, principal of the Lycée Diane Benvenuti, a Jewish school in Paris, tells Mireille Silcoff of Canada's National Post how French Jews have increasingly taken their security into their own hands. "For us now, this means one of two things: bunker in with bomb-proof glass, or leave." Barthel has joined many others in choosing the latter course. Immigration from France to Israel has more than doubled since 2001; from France to Canada it has increased by more than 700 percent; and in the Miami area, "entirely French-Jewish communities have cropped up, bringing with them everything from kosher patisseries to synagogues both French in language and culture."

Nov. 22, 2005 update: ""French Jews are leaving France in ever-growing numbers, fleeing a wave of anti-Semitism," reports Mireille Silcoff in the National Post. And more than a few of them – close to 1,000 in 2005 and a similar number in 2006 – are turning up in Quebec.

She tells about Frederic Saadoun, who moved to Montreal with his wife Valerie and children from Paris in August 2005, and who knew he had made the right decision when his young son saw him leave the synagogue in October and told him, very alarmed, "Papa! You are wearing your skullcap on the street. You must take it off! It is not safe!" To which, Saadoun replied that "in Canada you can wear a kippa on the street with no fear of danger." Another sign: When the library of the United Talmud Torah elementary school in Montreal was firebombed in 2004, the Saadouns were initially alarmed, then reassured by the immediate and strong response of the authorities. "In France, [firebombings] were common," says Valerie Saadoun. "And they went unnoticed by the authorities—that was the scary thing. The silence."

Sylvain Abitbol, president of Federation CJA, notes that the umbrella French Jewish organization, Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France (CRIF) "was slow to admit that there was a problem in France." Shellie Ettinger, executive director of JIAS Montreal, agrees. "The patriarchs of the French community were not ready to see their children leaving. They were less than welcoming to us a few years ago, but once synagogues started being bombed in France, and they saw that we were close with Immigration Quebec, who are obviously not on a Jew-courting campaign, they began to warm up."

March 6, 2006 update: Gunnar Heinsohn, professor of sociology at Bremen University, looks beyond the immediate emigration and reaches an audacious conclusion in an article, "Babies Win Wars":

In some ways, the faster Europe collapses the better it will be for the U.S., whose chances of defeating global terrorism would improve by a panic-driven influx of the Old World's best, brightest and bravest ready to strengthen it economically and militarily.

Eurabia on the cover of the "Economist," June 24-30, 2006.

do not seem to have much confidence in their country's chances of survival. Last year a record number of 121,000 people emigrated from the Netherlands, the largest number ever, while only 92,000 immigrated in. This emigration figure is the highest figure in the entire history of the country so far. The Netherlands is today also the European nation with the highest proportion of emigrants. Since 2003 more people have been leaving the country than entering it. The numbers are rising. In the first quarter of this year 29,000 people left the Netherlands – 5,000 more than in the same period last year. Now Ayaan Hirsi Ali is leaving too. The bell tolls for the Dutch, and those who do not hear it must be deaf.

July 7, 2006 update: In 2004, Germans for the first time in recent history departed Germany more than they moved to it, reports Die Welt in "Die Deutschen sind überall gern gesehene Einwanderer." The online version lacks the graph in the print version, but I happened to be in Germany today and have scanned it in.

July 27, 2006 update: The largest number of French Jews – 650 in one day – since 1970 arrived to a festive reception in Israel, complete with the prime minister and lavish ceremonies. They emigrated despite the two-front war Israel is currently fighting. The total number of immigrants from France totals more than 3,500, the highest in 35 years. Last year, their number reached only 3,005, which in turn was 25 percent more than the year before.

Oct. 25, 2006 update: Paul Belien reports in "The Rape of Europe":

The German author Henryk M. Broder recently told the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant (12 October) that young Europeans who love freedom, better emigrate. Europe as we know it will no longer exist 20 years from now. Whilst sitting on a terrace in Berlin, Broder pointed to the other customers and the passers-by and said melancholically: "We are watching the world of yesterday." Europe is turning Muslim. As Broder is sixty years old he is not going to emigrate himself. "I am too old," he said. However, he urged young people to get out and "move to Australia or New Zealand. That is the only option they have if they want to avoid the plagues that will turn the old continent uninhabitable."

Oct. 30, 2006 update: Der Spiegel reports on German out-migration at "Und tschüs ..." Its most dramatic piece of evidence is the chart, which shows that in 2005, for the first time in recent history, more Germans left the country than entered it. It is noteworthy that the largest number of emigrants went to Australia. The online version is microscopically small, so (again, happening to be in Germany), I have scanned the paper version and reproduce it here.

"Brits Abroad"

The study found 5.5 million expat Britons - a number that rises to six million if those who live or work part of the year abroad are included. Taken together, they represent approximately 10% of British citizens. … Over the course of 40 years, some 67,500 more Britons have left the UK every year than have returned - a population loss that has been balanced out by increasing immigration. The number of British citizens who chose to go permanently abroad doubled from 53,000 in 2001 to 107,000 last year - some 2,000 people a week.

Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, a co-author of the report, expects emigration to double. "If current trends continue, we could expect as many as a million more British nationals to emigrate over the next five years." Those most often emigrating are young workers without families and retirees; 40 percent of the émigrés are professional or managerial. In all, 41 countries host at least 10,000 permanent British residents; the list of top destinations contains few surprises:

Australia 1,300,000
Spain 761,000
United States 678,000
Canada 603,000
Ireland 291,000
New Zealand 215,000
South Africa 212,000
France 200,000

Sriskandarajah finds that UK economic strength drives the scale and spread of this diaspora by encouraging people to look further. "Britain is truly at the crossroads of the global movement of people. Two-thirds of Britons who leave do so to seek employment abroad - and are replaced by skilled professionals from elsewhere in the world. When the going is good, Brits get going." Lord Triesman, Foreign Office Minister for Consular Affairs, welcomed the report, noting that "Globalisation has increased movement of people both to and from the UK."

Comment: What is especially interesting is the completely happy response to these devastating numbers. Any sensible reading would raise the alarm but denial is so much more comforting.

Mar. 11, 2007 update: "French Jews flock to area" headlines the Miami Herald, in an informative article written by Alfonso Chardy. U.S. Jewish organizations estimate that the number of escapees from France in South Florida are somewhere between 2,000 to 4,000. In contrast, Vanessa Elmaleh, an immigration attorney specializing in French Jewish immigration, estimates more than 10,000 French Jews in South Florida (and more than 50,000 moving or actively planning to move to Israel). She notes how portions of neighborhoods in north Miami-Dade (particularly Surfside, Bal Harbour, and Aventura) show distinct signs of French Jewish culture. As Pascal Cohen puts it, he misses life in France but has no regrets about leaving. He did it for his children, "So they can have a future." Also, though not officially refugees, the French Jews feel like refugees and some of them are petitioning for this aylum in the United States:

To: US Congress

Re: American asylum for French Jews

After the barbaric torture and assassination of a young Jew from Paris, because he was Jewish, in a context of Islamic anti-Semitism rising in this country, more and more members of the French Jewish community are no longer feeling safe. The number of Anti-Semitic acts in France has reached a level not seen since World War II.

We think that America, faithful to its tradition of offering asylum to people facing danger in their own country should open its doors to them. We ask the Congress to pass a legislation that would give the status of refugee to French Jews

Comment: Strong words but ones suggestive of how Jewish life in France has degenerated, and what emigration yet lies in store.

Mar. 20, 2007 update: That petition now has more than 7,000 signatures and was sent to the U.S. Congress. Some French Jewish leaders, reports Arutz 7, are outraged: "This petition is bizarre, stupid and out of place," said Chaim Musicant, director of CRIF, umbrella organization of secular French Jewish groups.

Apr. 3, 2007 update: The Dutch are leaving their homeland in record numbers – the first nine months of 2006 saw some 100,000 depart, an increase of 12 percent over the previous year. Also, according to the "Emigration Monitor," 32 percent of the Dutch population is seriously considering emigration, as opposed to 26 percent last year, a 23 percent increase. To make their way easoer, entrepreneurs have established an "Emigration Fair," which Pieter Dorsman reports on:

Setting up a farm in New Zealand? Start up a business in Tasmania or do you like to cash in on British Columbia's construction boom? All these options were presented at a real ‘Emigration Fair' in Amsterdam earlier this month which drew record crowds. Whatever pessimism there is in and about Europe and no matter how commentators try to figure out if this exodus is real, the market has smelled the opportunity and knows how to respond. As opposed to "Give me your tired, your poor" many jurisdictions in the new world have discovered that the disgruntled Dutch are anything but tired and poor. They're young, affluent, well-educated, entrepreneurial, fluent in English.

Feb. 21, 2008 update: The Telegraph editors review recent British emigration statistics in "Why Britain's brightest and best are emigrating ":

We already knew, courtesy of the Office for National Statistics, that emigration from this country is running at higher levels than at any time since before the First World War, with 200,000 British citizens a year departing these shores. We now learn from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that we lead the world in exporting talent, with a higher proportion of highly skilled professionals emigrating from this country than from any other (except Mexico). The OECD estimates that 1.1 million highly skilled Britons - more than one in ten of the total - are now living overseas.

Why this exodus? The foremost reason, as the newspaper delicately puts it, is that "unchecked immigration over the past decade is creating a country many Britons no longer feel comfortable in. … what the OECD figures reveal, when set alongside the half a million foreigners coming here each year (nearly four million new arrivals since 1997) is a "churn" effect that is fundamentally transforming the make-up of our society."

Feb. 24, 2008 update: Emigration from the Netherlands in 2006 actually totaled 132,470, according to a Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute study, "Away from the Netherlands: Immigration at the beginning of the 21st century." That number has gone up by 2/3rds since 2000. Two thirds of that number (about 88,000) are of immigrant origin and one third (about 44,000) are ethnic Dutch.

Apr. 21, 2008 update: According to the website "Danish Affairs," Sweden is being transformed by the twin phenomena of emigration and immigration: "A population exchange is currently going on in Sweden. The numbers are now comparable to the massive transatlantic emigration of the late 19th century. Kurt Lundgren has done some statistical research [in Swedish]. During 2007 45,418 Swedish citizens emigrated. In 1881the number was 45,992." Apr. 22, 2008 update: Tino Sanandaji of the University of Chicago did some more digging into these statistics and writes me: "While the population transformation through immigration is without doubt taking place and is accelerating, net emigration of ethnic Swedes is modest. Some 60 percent of the emigrants mentioned in the data above were not born in Sweden, but are immigrants returning home (mostly from other EU-countries), while some others are second-generation immigrants returning to their ancestral lands. In all, about 20,000 ethnic Swedes leave the country annually and about 12-13,000 ethnic Swedes return home, making the net emigration number for people born in Sweden about 7-8,000 per year."

Related Topics:  Antisemitism, Dhimmitude, Immigration, Muslims in Europe receive the latest by email: subscribe to daniel pipes' free mailing list This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

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