Post excerpted from American Thinker
Geo-Political Decline
Europe’s demographic situation is in stark contrast to that of the United States, where the population officially passed the 300 million mark in October 2006. The United States is now the third most populous country in the world, behind China and India. Moreover, the United States is growing faster than any other industrialized nation… in fact, it is virtually the only developed country expected to grow this century. All analysts agree that America’s demographic dynamism will have major geo-political implications, especially for Europe.
Some Europeans are beginning to acknowledge this reality. The Paris-based EU Institute for Security Studies predicts that by 2025, Europe will represent only six percent of the world’s population and that its relative share of global wealth and trade will have shrunk. It says that
‘the ongoing debate on the future of Europe suffers from a lack of perspective on the global developments that are changing the context of European integration itself…the risk is that the Union and its Member States will be increasingly subject to, rather than agents of, change.’
The False Promise of Immigration
How did the United States, which turned 230 years old in July 2006, get so big so fast? American growth has been fuelled by a combination of economic stability, high birth rates and immigration. Indeed, the United States is the largest immigrant-receiving country in the world. Some 50 percent of the 100 million newest Americans are recent immigrants or their descendents.
Europe, however, is also a magnet for immigration: It will attract up to 1 million newcomers this year. But the European experience with immigration is quite different from that of America. Part of the reason is that many immigrants to Europe end up on welfare, while in the United States, almost all immigrants take one or more entry-level jobs and work their way up the economic ladder. Welfare is simply not the American way.
Islamic Conquest of Europe?
Moreover, most immigrants to the United States are fully integrated into American society by the second generation, regardless of their country of origin. By contrast, most immigrants to Europe are Muslims who refuse to assimilate and instead tend to cluster in marginalized ghettos on the outskirts of cities across the continent.
Here, too, the American experience is quite different. The best available estimates show that there are between 1.9 million and 2.8 million Muslims in the United States. And unlike their European counterparts, American Muslims generally do not feel marginalized or isolated from political participation. According to a 2004 Zogby Poll, American Muslims are more educated and affluent than the national average, with 59 percent of them holding at least an undergraduate college degree. Moreover, the majority of American Muslims are employed in professional fields, with one in three having an income over $75,000 a year.
But back to Europe: The Muslim population of Europe has more than doubled since 1980, and according to some estimates, there are some 25 million Muslims living on the continent today. Demographers predict that this figure may double by 2015, and that the number of Muslims could outnumber non-Muslims in all of Western Europe by mid-century. This prompted Princeton University’s Bernard Lewis to tell the German newspaper Die Welt that ‘Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century.’
This reality is already influencing European foreign policymaking and does not auger well for the future of transatlantic relations. Indeed, many analysts believe that the steady weakening of Europe is the underlying cause for the widespread anti-American and anti-Israel bigotry found among Europe’s elites, many of whom are bowing to pressure from Muslim residents as a way to buy a fake peace with radical Islamists. Says Fouad Ajami, a well-known authority of the Arab world: ‘In ways both intended and subliminal, the escape into anti-Americanism is an attempt at false bonding with the peoples of Islam.’
