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Europeans Fleeing Eurabia
by Daniel PipesOctober 10, 2004
updated Jul 27, 2008
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2004/10/europeans-fleeing-eurabia
The
Miami Herald 
has an important articletoday, "French Jews Escape to United States," by Elinor J. Brecher, giving example after example of French Jews who gave upon 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 inthe relatively small numbers of Jews making the centuries-old move from the OldWorld 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 moremarginalized – it is easy to foresee millions of Europeans "escaping" to the UnitedStates and perhaps other countries, such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Whenadded 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-Pritchardreportsin London's
 Daily Telegraph
about asignificant 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 oncecelebrated way of life, the Dutch middle classes are leaving the country in droves for thefirst time in living memory. The new wave of educated migrants are quietly voting withtheir feet against a multicultural experiment long touted as a model for the world, butincreasingly 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 mosaicwith three million people of foreign roots out of 16 million. Almost one million areMuslims, 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 isaccelerating, reaching 13,313 net outflow in the first half of 2004. Many retiringworkers are moving to the south of France, but a growing bloc leaving the countryappears 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, and4.7 per cent unemployment. "None of my clients is leaving for economic reasons. Youcan't get a visa anyway if you haven't got a work record," said Frans Buysse[, the headof a private immigration consultancy]. Europe's leader for much of the last century insocial 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 
 glossesthe recentsurge 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 bean artifact of an aging population in which many are retiring to warmer places. But itcould 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 areleaving Antwerp every year, even as 5,000 to 6,000 non-European immigrants arrive inthe 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 migrantexodus 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 recountshow 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 leavethe country." An agency that handles paperwork for departing Dutch was had four timesthe 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 wavesof mostly Muslim immigrants. The emigrants tend to leave for Australia, New Zealandand Canada. Diplomats from those three countries confirmed the interest, saying theyhad been "swamped" with inquiries. The reporter notes statistics pointing to "aquickening flight of the white middle class." In 1999, nearly 30,000 native Dutchmoved 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 fiveyears," said a demographer working at the bureau.
March 3, 2005 update
:
 Ha'aretz 
reports today on a survey that finds "60,000 FrenchJews want to move to Israel." Arik Cohen of Bar-Ilan University reached thisconclusion by giving questionnaires to the 125,000 French Jewish tourists who visitedIsrael in the summer of 2004. Of this huge sample, 52 percent said they see their futurein 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 consideringimmigration to Israel in the near future. The findings were presented at a pressconference in Jerusalem inaugurating AMI, an organization of French Jewry for increasing Jewish immigration from France.
May 4, 2005 update
:Radio Nederlands informs usthat in 1999, nearly 30,000 nativeDutch 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 collegeor university degrees. … The problem for the Netherlands is that the ones that they don'twant to lose are the ones that are leaving."Henri Beunders, professor of history, media and culture at Erasmus University inRotterdam, notes the role of the Theo van Gogh murder: "The assassin of Theo vanGogh 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 verysmall 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 thekilling 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 onlythat "It will make things a bit more complicated because you have to integrate an evengreater number of foreigners into your own country, with all the very complicatedregulation systems we have in this country." He also wants to see benefit in thisexchange: "Growing mobility, on the other hand, is also a good sign of the growingunification of Europe and understanding of people - I hope." In like spirit, the radioreporter, Sarah Johnson, speculates that "Europe's pioneer for much of the last centuryin social experiments, it seems the Netherlands may now be pointing to the next culturalrevolution: the bourgeois exodus."
Comment 
: It's all very well to put a cheery face on a terrible development, but let's hopeno 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 reporttoday 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 and90,000 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 haveserious 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) makeslittle sense, as both these conditions obtained 5 and 10 years ago, when emigration wastrivial.
Comment 
: This report appears to be another manifestation of denial that Holland isundergoing the throes of deep change.
Nov. 8, 2005 update
: Mark Steynconsiders the French riots and observes: If the insurgents emerge emboldened, what next? In five years' time, there will be evenmore of them, and even less resolve on the part of the French state. That, in turn, islikely to accelerate the demographic decline. Europe could face a continent-wideversion of the "white flight" phenomenon seen in crime-ridden American cities duringthe 1970s, as Danes and Dutch scram to America, Australia or anywhere else that willhave them.
Nov. 19, 2005 update
: Romain Barthel, principal of the Lycée Diane Benvenuti, aJewish school in Paris, tells Mireille Silcoff of Canada's
 National Post 
how French Jewshave increasingly taken their security into their own hands. "For us now, this means oneof two things: bunker in with bomb-proof glass, or leave." Barthel has joined manyothers in choosing the latter course.Immigration from Franceto Israel has more thandoubled 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, bringingwith them everything from kosher patisseries to synagogues both French in languageand 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 
. Andmore than a few of them – close to 1,000 in 2005 and a similar number in 2006 – areturning up in Quebec.She tells about Frederic Saadoun, who moved to Montreal with his wife Valerie andchildren from Paris in August 2005, and who knew he had made the right decision when
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