Interestingly enough all of Europe is rising up against immigration.
The anti-immigrant push is the untold story of politics all over Europe and the U.S.
In Portugal the Popular Party won 14 seats by promising to introduce tighten laws against immigration and immigrants.
In the Netherlands, where an anti-immigration politician was murdered for his views, the late Pym Fortuyn’s party won 26 parliamentary seats.
In Norway, where theft and rape committed by immigrants has become a regular news item, the far right Progress Party also won 26 seats by promising to cap immigration at 1,000 people per year.
In Denmark, the Danish People’s Party is now the country’s third largest. It advocates harsh policies against those seeking political asylum, as well as a demand to curb aid to the third world.
In France, the rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen lost in the final elections. Nevertheless, it was his best showing. Some six million French men and women voted for him, underscoring the popularity of his anti-immigration policies in the wake of Muslim riots.
This suspicion and hostility to foreigners is not exclusive to the other side of the pond. The Bush administration crashed and burned when it announced that a United Arab Emirate company was in line to guard U.S. ports.
New York governor Eliot Spitzer recently announced plans to grant undocumented immigrants their own drivers’ licenses. This plan to “bring illegals out of the darkness” was pitilessly mocked, pilloried and hooted down. Spitzer’s remarkable rise came to a full stop. It will be very difficult for him to restart the engine.
Hillary Clinton’s John Kerry moment (“I voted for it before I voted against it”) came when she ambiguously defended Spitzer’s move. Her rivals for the Democratic presidential candidacy made much of this; she is still in the recovery room while her aids administer oxygen and adrenalin to a once-confident campaign
Political Mavens » OUT OF THE DARKNESS