Reply #91: Update: NYT: Expulsion of Roma Raises Questions in France [View All]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/world/europe/20france.html?src=me

On Thursday, France flew some 100 Roma home to Romania — people who France insists agreed to leave voluntarily for a flight and a resettlement sum of about $385 instead of facing the chance of forcible expulsion in a month. Robert A. Kushen, executive director of the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre, said that by providing this essentially false choice, “the French are trying to insulate themselves from legal challenge, arguing that those who leave are doing so voluntarily and are not being expelled as a group.” Mass expulsions based on ethnicity violate European Union law, Mr. Kushen said, and the failure of France to do individual assessments of each case — as opposed to cursory examinations of papers by the police — also violates European Union rules.

The new campaign has been roundly criticized as political, an effort by Mr. Sarkozy to revive his support on the right of the French political spectrum. The campaign has also been attacked as racist, focusing on ethnic or racial groups rather than individual criminals. The government rejects the criticism as misguided and utopian and says it is trying to fight crime and preserve public order.

But both the Sarkozy campaign and the attacks on it have sometimes confused juvenile delinquents in the poor suburbs, many of them Muslim, with the Roma, who are not French, and the French travelers, who have the right to stay in their own country. French law requires municipalities to provide space for the gens du voyage to park and hook up to electricity and water. But the mayors have been reluctant, and the government admits it has provided space to less than half of the travelers, and many of them have set up illegal camps.

France says it expelled 10,000 Roma last year — two-thirds of the estimated Roma population of France — without all this publicity. But the Roma have been skilled at returning to Romania and Bulgaria, where they say they face worse discrimination and poverty, and then slipping back into France, where, under European Union rules, they can enter without a visa. It is one thing to throw them out for overstaying, he said. “But the person can come back, the next day, completely legally,” he said. What has changed, he said, is the aggressiveness and frequency of the camp clearings.

Interesting that the Roma are in trouble for NOT taking French jobs ("unable to prove that they had full-time work"), while American immigrants are disdained FOR taking American jobs. Just goes to show that when you have an "us vs. them" mentality, it doesn't really matter what "they" do, "we" just want "them" gone.