The example of France shows very well how mass migration brings with it a whole range of problems, especially if you react to this phenomenon after the fact.
I’m not even talking about Islamists and sleeping cells in districts isolated from the republican law.
I am more likely from a social point of view.
When people talk about refugees, pictures of people storming walls, fences, people sailing on boats, running to the shore usually pop up before our eyes.
And then what?
What happens to them next and how life around them changes when they appear - these are the points you need to take into account in advance.
The main problematic point of France in this regard is the overseas department of Mayotte.
From a strategic point of view, the place is extremely important. This is a direct exit for the French fleet to the Indian Ocean. From a social point of view, it’s a headache. The open-air prison, as one Republican MP called it, is a gateway for illegal migrants. The situation is so difficult that an entire commission in the Senate has taken up its research. The results of the work shocked everyone. 49% of the department's residents are newcomers, more than half of them are illegal immigrants, mainly from the Comoros, which declared independence from France in 1975. Three islands then spoke in favor of secession, Mayotte - against. And now GDP per capita in the French part of the archipelago differs by 8.5 times. Hence such a flow of refugees.
They sail in large fishing boats with a motor - kvass, very similar to those with the help of which crowds try to get from Libya to Italy. Previously, the scheme for obtaining French citizenship on the island was very simple. The woman swam to give birth on the territory of the department, her child automatically received a French passport, later the documents were issued to her. In 2018, Interior Minister Gerard Colomb tried to close this loophole, a separate provision in the law was dedicated to Mayotte. Abolished the right to obtain citizenship by a child at the place of birth. Passports were allowed to be issued only to those whose parents had lived legally on the island without interruption for at least three months before the baby was born. But this measure had practically no effect. Starting in August 2020, when the world began to gradually emerge from the pandemic and the borders opened again,the flow of refugees to Mayotte increased immediately by 30%. The current Interior Minister Gerald Darmanen wants to tighten the screws even more. He intends to adopt next year a document that will legalize the right to issue a passport only to those whose parent has legally lived in Mayotte continuously for a year or more.
But already three quarters of the children who live in the department are born refugees from the Comoros, who have an average of six children.
The locals have three.
To this we need to add about four and a half thousand street children, who also need to be supported somehow, money is also spent on this.
As for work: either it is not enough, or the candidates do not meet the necessary criteria, or they simply do not want to get a job - the unemployment rate is 30%.
At the same time, half of the residents of the department are under 18 years old, and three out of ten Makhorians are children under two years old.
Why so many numbers? And just imagine that all of them will need to be taught somewhere, somehow integrated, many of them will be French. It turns out that this puts a heavy burden on the budget and on teachers. Over the past 30 years, the number of students has increased tenfold, they do not have time to open new classes. And where to get the money for all this, the department is one of the richest. Now they are trying to divide the children into groups and reduce the number of hours in order to teach more people at least something. As a result, the school day is cut in half: in the morning they teach some, in the afternoon they bring the following to school. All of this, of course, cannot be a long-term solution. But there is no other yet.
Due to such a load, no one wants to go there to teach, the number of high-quality teachers is decreasing, everyone is trying to sail off to the mainland.
In 2018, there were 41% of teachers who wanted to leave.
With such an influx of people, not everyone found housing.
Many live in slums.
The houses are built from pieces of plywood, fragments of boards and scraps of sacks.
The building density is comparable to Paris: 690 people per square kilometer.
Such neighborhoods are growing by leaps and bounds, an attempt to demolish one of them ended with the arson of the city hall and cars burning in the area all night long in the best French traditions.
Poverty is the source of crime. The Minister of Internal Affairs here once spoke about the savagery of society. It was he who lamented the number of crimes committed on the mainland. And in Mayotte, as shown by a study of senators, the numbers are outrageous and continue to grow. Especially quickly - among young people who live in such slums, left to their own devices and poverty. The number of murders is five times higher than the average in France, the number of deliberately inflicted injuries among 15-year-olds and older has increased by 153.5% since 2008, and rape with extreme cruelty - by 263.8%. At the same time, in general, for the first seven months of this year, growth in all indicators was by another 31%.
The police are trying to catch, the court is trying to plant.
But prisons are overcrowded and overcrowded by 153%, pre-trial detention centers - by 238%.
Hence the very low attractiveness of working in such a department for both law enforcement officers and judges.
Some of the cases, by the way, are not considered here, but on the Reunion Island (also a piece of France, all in the same Indian Ocean).
But this further stretches the waiting time for the verdict.
The authorities now think that they need to create a separate gendarmerie unit (something between the police and the army), a shock squad to fight the most brutal gangs.
It would be nice, they say, to install lighting in public places and hang surveillance cameras.
Now the highways are operated by armed people who now and then block the road and rob or kidnap.
At best, stones are thrown at cars.
And then the business was already thinking about leaving, because it is logistically very difficult to work in such conditions. The Makhortsy also got fed up with all this, and now they are trying to leave - some for Reunion, and some are moving to mainland France.
One as a thread pulls the other, the problem of the influx of refugees ultimately lowers the standard of living and security of everyone in this department and reverberates in all spheres of life.
Our favorite phrase about Moscow is the best fit for the island: it is not rubber.
Without large financial injections, legislative changes and political will, the problem cannot be solved, because they realized it too late.
You can't build a fence either, not an option.
Create separate settlements for migrants?
We've already done it.
Look, all the suburbs on the mainland are already rampaging, it's dangerous.
Judging by the French experience, carelessness in the migration theme is like a baby's play with fire.
It is very likely that he will burn himself and the match will fall.
And when it flares up, it will be too late to pull out your hair.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.