“Over the past few years there have been reports of French Jews relocating or even being urged to relocate by some Jewish groups and now there’s a new twist: French Jews are fleeing into Florida, the Miami Herald reports. And it’s providing a booming business for Florida immigration lawyers:
“Rod Kukurudz decided to uproot his family from a comfortable life in France to Surfside when his then 16-year-old daughter, Audrey, came home one night in 2005 – upset and fearful. “Dad,” she told him, “now even if it’s hot I have to wear a scarf to hide my Star of David,” while riding the Paris Metro.
French Jews living in South Florida told The Miami Herald that hostility from Islamic militants in France after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States spurred them to leave. Departures surged after last year’s abduction and death of Ilan Halimi in France. The 23-year-old Halimi, a French Jew of Moroccan parents, was kidnapped Jan. 21, 2006, by a gang of youths calling themselves the “Barbarians.”
“The atmosphere created by that episode, plus other incidents and the general hostility of Muslims in France toward Jews, is what’s behind my decision to leave,” said Kukurudz, who now lives with his wife and their three daughters, including Audrey, in Surfside. Vanessa Elmaleh is among a growing number of South Florida immigration attorneys helping French Jews secure U.S. visas – but not necessarily asylum.
So it’s being done perhaps a bit more under the political radar:
“Immigration court figures show a slight uptick in the number of asylum applications from French nationals starting in 2003 – but those figures do not specify whether applicants were French Jews. South Florida immigration attorneys say the majority of French Jews are arriving on immigrant, investor and business visas.
The Herald notes that a new State Department human rights reports say anti-semitic incidents are down in France from the same period in 2004 but up from the same period last year. The French government condemns any such incidents.
“France is not an anti-Semitic country,” Philippe Vinogradoff, France’s consul general in Miami, told The Miami Herald on Thursday. “France is doing a lot of efforts in its jurisdiction, in its education system, to eradicate definitively any trace of anti-Semitism.”
France’s Jewish population has been variously estimated at between 500,000 and 700,000 and its Muslim population at five million to six million. But French Jews here say the community has been depleted by frequent departures, the majority to Israel. Jewish Agency.figures show that almost 14,000 French Jews have resettled in Israel since 2001.
But the situation has become perceived as increasingly perilous for Jews in France. By 2005, some French Jews were bombproofing their schools.
More here
