“The fires of disintegration”

What would you prefer to have in your city: a terrorist
attack or revolts in the outskirts? The inhabitants of
London would vote for revolts, undoubtedly. However, the
terrorists that hit London can be counted on the fingers
of one hand whereas the number of rebels is unknown and
there are good reasons to believe that the French have
bigger problems.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the
ambitious French Minister of the Interior described the
rebels as “bandits” and “the rabble” promising he
would “clean” the violent zones. Such words were condemned
by the Left but the Right blames immigration. However,
immigration is not the problem (which is too weak in
France, as well as the admittance of political refugees)
but the integration of the populations that came to France
several decades ago.
Those ex-immigrants do not integrate and they find
themselves crammed into ghettos. Their level of
unemployment is quite high as well as their arrests. In
the United States, immigrants are more integrated and they
benefit from the economic opportunities of the free
market. In France, we don’t care too much about
integration whereas in the United States, men like Samuel
Huntington are alarmed by the integration of Latin
Americans. But it’s obvious that Muslim populations are
difficult to integrate. The disintegration flames do not
burn in the United States but in Nicolas Sarkozy’s
France.