But don’t immediately write off Herre Sareen as some sort of pornographic-minded fool. Rather, in his parallel role (to that of politician, not fool) as expert on the question of integrating foreigners into Danish society he has been called upon to react to a proposal from a much more prominent Danish politician, namely Peter Skaarup, who is vice-chairman of the powerful (and immigrant-hating) Danish People’s Party – who actually might be the buffoon here. At issue is the Danmarksfilm, the film shown in Danish embassies abroad to those applying to immigrate to Denmark, intended to give those foreigners an accurate picture of what Danish culture is all about. According to Skaarup, it’s time to spice it up a bit, add a little of the ol’ T&A – because, after all, Danish women do like to go topless on the beaches (heck, even occasionally in city parks) in the summer, and maybe the prospect of having to encounter this will so put off Islamic fundamentalists that they will tear up their immigration applications right then and there in their local Danish embassy!

(BTW I understand that there is already something similar in the video that immigrants wanting to live in the Netherlands have to see when they apply, except that in this case it includes not women’s breasts but men walking around holding hands and kissing, to make clear the much more tolerant attitude to homosexuality that prevails here. As far as I know, the logic behind this is purely along the lines of “Don’t say we didn’t warn you!” and not any misguided strategy to dissuade people from applying to come here in the first place.)

This Skaarup guy may be a much bigger political hotshot, but local counselor Sareen has got his number, in fact two of them, in this matter:

In the first place, they’ve seen enough bare breasts before. In the second, it’s completely foolish to believe that fundamentalists who are so extreme that they want to blow Denmark up can be frightened away by bare breasts.

Here at EuroSavant we’ll try to stay in front of further developments along this line, if any. As for Danish policy, maybe Skaarup’s suggestion is not such a bust after all: the result could turn out to be increased demand in much of the Western world for admittance to the film rooms of Danish embassies, and maybe even to Denmark itself!

                          

But just don’t take my word for this, even if you can’t read Dutch. In fact, I first became aware myself of this piece from an English translation posted on the Presseurop site. There’s just one main discrepancy that I can see, though. That Danish People’s Party: why would De Groene Amsterdammer happen to be writing about them just now? Silly – there’s a general election about to occur here in the Netherlands on June 9, and one of its biggest sub-plots is how favorable the results will turn out to be for the PVV or Party for Freedom, which, yes, is the main anti-immigrant party in this country. Indeed, the lede to De Groene Amsterdammer’s piece cites the Dansk Folkeparti as “a beautiful source of inspiration” for Geert Wilders, the PVV’s leader.

On the other hand, the Presseurop piece makes no mention at all of the PVV! I must ask: why? Because English-language-only readers should not have their intellects burdened further with an additional consideration such as this? Because it would just not be “politically correct,” due to the PVV’s shady reputation in many circles, to mention what is – after all – the really sole motivation for why this particular article appeared in De Groene Amsterdammer at this particular time? I hate to break it to the Presseurop editors but, although the Dutch and the Danish feel quite a bit of common cultural make-up between them, the Dutch (at least) are not terribly interested in the details of the Danish political system or its workings for most of the time!

                          

(Please don’t confuse Det Konservative Folkeparti with Dansk Folkeparti, or the Danish People’s Party, which made its name with its aggressively anti-immigrant stance and is not currently in the government – although it effectively is, since its support enables the current coalition to carry on without being voted down in the Parliament. Also of note: Lene Espersen, a woman, is consistently labeled in the newspapers as the Conservative People’s Party’s formand or “spokesman”; I guess they don’t get all hung up about gender- or politically-correct terminology in Denmark.)

“We have yielded when it comes to democratic integration,” was the pronouncement on Tuesday last week as the Conservative People’s Party presented a 13-point plan for doing something about that “yielding.” Their emphasis lay upon upholding “Danish values” and inculcating them into all those who come to reside in the country; of particular importance here was equal rights for women, given how that is frequently a problem among some of those immigrants. (Which particular immigrant-groups demonstrate such problems was never mentioned, at least in the news-report – I guess the Danes have their problems with “political correctness” after all!) In practical terms this meant such things such as making sure “equal rights for women” is part of the integration-course that all new immigrants have to follow, and ensuring similar instruction on that and democratic values generally is built into elementary and middle school curricula. But there was also a punitive provision, namely that “if oppression of a family’s women can be established,” then further access to higher education can be denied, apparently to all involved family members.

Espersen further declared, “We have believed that if one simply learns Danish and gains a job, the rest comes by itself. This doesn’t happen.” That’s right, Ms. Espersen, but do Danish values necessarily “come by themselves” even for those who were born in Denmark, as full Danish citizens? One other politician, named Manu Sareen, thinks not. (He’s of Indian descent, but arrived in Denmark at the age of 3 and is a prominent member of Copenhagen’s city government as a member of Det Radikale Venstre – the Radical Left, a “social-liberal” party.) As Anita Sørensen reports yet again in the pages of Berlingske Tidende, he therefore thinks such “Danish values” education is a good idea, not only for immigrants, but also for the Danes themselves. And especially in the area of women’s equal rights:

This is a bloody good idea, for there are 60,000 Danish children who experience their mothers getting beaten in Denmark every single year. We just have to say that this is such a good idea that it should apply to all families. It’s important that we don’t forget the Danish women who are beaten by their men.

                          

(Maybe I should have just stolen that title to make a more eye-catching heading for this blogpost, but I decided against it. By the way, the only other European columnist I can think of that I would want to watch specifically for any reaction to the election would be Agnès Giard, sex-blogger for France’s Libération, whom I have certainly covered before. But it seems politics generally lie outside of what she regards as her journalistic remit; the article she happened to post right after the election was actually entitled Declaration of love to the zombies. So there you have the link, although I’m not going to deal with that one, you’ll have to read the piece in French yourself. But no, rest assured that it has nothing to do with any politician, whether American or not.)

Why are you Europeans so interested in an American election? That’s the question Høi says he has been asked all the time, both by Americans he knew and those he didn’t but just happened to run across in a bar during time off from his reporting duties for Berlingske Tidende in the States – but in the latter case probably only after his new buddies finally noticed his accent and were moved to ask “Are you from France?”

That they are even asking this question – I mean “Why are you so interested?” – reveals (or confirms) something to Høi, namely “the American ambivalence towards the Old World.” And he goes on; check this out:

Americans are the newly-rich members of the family, who have nothing against posing with their giant, expensive house with newly-acquired art on the walls, but at the same time crave acceptance from the rest of the family, as they continue to doubt slightly their own table-manners.”

“Why are you so interested?”, then, according to Høi is a question that is trying to elicit two answers, often at the same time: 1) “Of course I’m interested, because everyone in the world is!” and 2) “Yes, I’m interested after all, believe it or not, for the following flattering reason . . .”

Alright then, but: So why are you Europeans so interested? Høi provides three reasons:

1. American elections are always compelling, by definition. No one, anywhere, who is plugged into the events of the day can afford to be indifferent. (In other words, answer #1 above – “Of course I’m interested . . .”) One really could not have been indifferent even to Clinton vs. Dole in 1996, claims Høi.
2. We’re interested because American elections are unusually decisive by European standards, and thus they enable Europeans “to live out our own political ideas” – yes, even more than they can “live them out” in their own, native elections! Høi certainly has an interesting point here since it’s true that elections in democracies running a parliamentary rather than presidential system of government together with some variant of proportional representation – such as is the case in his native Denmark, also in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and certain other European states (e.g. certainly Italy) – usually turn out to be a matter, as he puts it, of just “plus or minus ten percent,” i.e. results that bring only small changes to the make up of a governing coalition and/or government – such little payoff for all that trouble and expense! (But that is much less true in France, for example – a presidential system more similar to that in the US – or actually in the UK, which ostensibly is parliamentary but is in reality highly “presidential” in the impact of its national elections primarily because of its “first-past-the-post” electoral system, combined with what is in broad lines still mainly a two-party structure. Of course Høi is abstracting from these counterexamples in order to continue setting forth his point.) Whereas, on the other hand, the momentous potential for change that Obama’s election has brought about is obvious to all; as an appetizer, there are even reports already about how his transition team has identified 200 Bush-issued executive orders that he will be countermanding on 20 January or soon thereafter.
3. Finally, this election was especially interesting, Høi declares, frankly because over here in Europe the picture of the United States as one mighty racist society still endures. Indeed, Høi does not put it in such terms, but it’s quite likely he feels that Europe considers the US to be more racist than Americans do themselves. So naturally, contemplating the candidacy of Barack Obama, very many European felt, as Høi puts it, that “it would do the Americans a world of good to get a black president” (amerikanerne ville have rigtig godt af at få en sort præsident). And now they have.
   

                          

De Villepin’s seeming acceptance that “France’s needs” in this area require looking-into is significant for at least two reasons. Firstly, though they may be of the same party, that doesn’t mean that Sarkozy and De Villepin automatically see eye-to-eye on public policy issues. Quite the opposite, in fact, for the great current divide within the UMP is between those like De Villepin in the faction of French President Jacques Chirac (who might well like to run for re-election as the Right’s candidate for president himself) and those around Sarkozy. This makes it hard to admit – whether explicitly or implicitly – that an idea put forth by the other faction is a good one, since that then enhances that faction’s candidate in voters’ eyes. (And in fact reporters Philippe Ridet and Jean-Louis Saux mention that De Villepin initially rejected Sarkozy’s proposition last week.) Beyond this somewhat petty reason is the rather grander one that restrictions on immigration have traditionally not gone down well in a France that prides itself in its openness and inclusiveness, especially to those coming to it from former colonial territories.

But that’s an attitude which was long ago jettisoned by one segment of France’s Right, namely the far-right of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National and its various off-shoots. Indeed, hostility to immigrants is easily these parties’ signature issue, and unfortunately that’s the same segment of the political spectrum which succeeded in the last presidential election in getting its candidate through to be the sole opponent to Chirac in that election’s second-round run-off. The mainstream right, in contrast, for a long time remained true to those traditions of openness, and Ridet and Saux give a good account of how the “tough guy” Interior Minister of the Right in the 1990s, Charles Pasqua, talked a hard line about how immigration quotas were necessary when his party was out of power but then didn’t see any need for them when it was in.

BUT THAT WAS THEN . . .

But attitudes have of course changed since then, and this idea of l’immigration choisie (selected immigration) has long been one advanced by Sarkozy, and could conceivably help account in part for his popularity as a politician. Now it seems that resistance from the rest of the Right might slowly be crumbling, but of course we’ll have a better idea about the extent with the issuing of next month’s report. According to the article, its three main subject-areas are already known: 1) The fight against illegal immigration; 2) Determining France’s needs for foreign labor by profession; and 3) Establishing a new agency under the Interior Ministry to run any new immigration regime.

Point #2 provides an important clue to a remaining difference between the two men’s positions, in that it says “by profession,” so that quotas by profession would be established but not by nationality, whereas Sarkozy has also called for the latter. In any case, though, crossing the philosophical line to accepting quotas, of almost any sort, is the important development here and is common to both positions. Rather more important is to see how (or whether) President Chirac’s own position evolves along these lines; the last that was heard from him, according to Ridet and Saux, was that “the position of France . . . is a priori hostile to any quota system.”

ABANDONED BY ITS FRIENDS?

By the way, this growing friendliness in France to immigration quotas is also spreading to the last place you would expect to see it, namely the Left (specifically the Parti Socialiste or PS, currently the French Left’s electoral standard-bearer). An accompanying Le Monde article (In the Socialist Party Malek Boutih Advocates This System) discloses the existence of an unpublished report advocating immigration quotas, “For a New Immigration Policy,” from Malek Boutih, national secretary of the PS for societal questions, former president of the anti-racism organization “SOS-Racisme,” and – you can tell by his name – from a family of North African origin, which makes his discussion of quotas all the more significant. He’s for them, for in his report he claims that French immigration policy is simply broken at present, and such quotas are needed as a means to fit immigration to “the welcoming capacities of our society.” He notably also calls explicitly for acceptance of the French “republican pact” – and particularly acceptance of the principle of laicité, or secularisation – to be required of any future prospective immigrants to France.

First the quotas idea was merely the province of the FN, with flirtation from Nicolas Sarkozy. But now it seems the current government is starting to take steps to make it reality, while on the Left the traditional defenders of French all-inclusiveness are now suffering defections. It does seem that a sea-change is gathering momentum here, although the contents of that February Interior Ministry report – and the reactions to it – will more definitively show how far France has travelled down this philosophical road.

                          

But times have changed: Parliament has given the go-ahead.

(The British Home Secretary, directly in charge of implementing the program over the next couple of years, has also changed, but the new top UK internal security official, Charles Clarke, is just as determined to do so as the old, David Blunkett.) But only after a debate in which Krönig detects wild exaggerations coming from both sides. Those against have warned against the end of democracy and freedom, while those for have lauded the ID card as the cure-all for the international drug-trade, misuse of political asylum, and of course terrorism.

As he points out, though, the Mohammed Atta al-Qaeda cell seemed to have little problem in carrying out their mission even as they first grouped together and planned it in supposedly-intrusive Germany. No, national ID cards according to Kröger can only somewhat “ease” police efforts against these scourges. What they can rather do something substantial about is illegal immigration and misuse of social welfare programs. For, just as is the case with most of the other European countries overloaded with asylum-seekers awaiting the decision about whether they will be allowed to stay, in England not being allowed to stay usually translates into staying anyway, but illegally, as rejected applicants simply melt away into the surrounding society.

The point of the ID card, then, according to Kröger, is to shore up support for the welfare state among the broad tax-paying classes who pay for it and who understandably lose patience with the thought of their tax money going to those who do not “deserve” it. His logic is persuasive, yet why is it, then, that most of the debate on the introduction of ID cards has revolved around fighting terrorism, a cause this measure supposedly won’t contribute much to? Are ID cards a good idea for true reason B that have nonetheless been sold to the British electorate for false reason A? And if true reason B, while valid per se, would on its own be considered not to bring sufficient absolute benefits to outweigh the erosion of civil liberties the introduction of such a measure entails – what then?

                          

That’s only as long as the governing liberal-conservative coalition includes in that program the DF’s pet initiatives, of course, which mainly have to do with making Denmark a more unfriendly place for the non-tourist non-Danish.

Rising popular discontent with those non-Danish, particularly the flood of asylum-seekers Denmark was then attracting, turned into the centerpiece issue of the last nation-wide legislative elections in November, 2001, and catapulted Kjærsgaard into her current “kingmaker” position on the Danish political scene.

It should be no surprise that the interview starts out with Kjærsgaard maintaining that, as the piece’s title states, this issue of what to do with foreigners should also be at the center of the next elections scheduled for 2005 – along with “social welfare, hospital waiting-lists, and legal reform,” the issues she claims the Danish people are mainly concerned about today. What’s remarkable about the ensuing conversation, though, is her specific prescriptions about what to do with every category of foreigner in Denmark. Her analysis may shock some with its central claim that those who aren’t supposed to be in Denmark should just leave – or even be forced to leave. At the same time, it could stiffen the backbones of authorities in other countries (such as the Netherlands) who are also grappling with these problems and finding it necessary to resort to forced expulsions.

“Who should be sent home?” asks Rehling early in the interview, and Kjærsgaard lays out her foreigners-in-Denmark typology:

• First, those whose requests for asylum have been denied. A no-brainer for Kjærsgaard: of course they should all be sent back where they came from immediately, forcibly if need be. “Everyone should be able to understand this – regardless of party affiliation.”
  
• Those without long-term residence permits. “These we must evaluate,” says Kjærsgaard. “See where they came from. Is there the possibility that they can go back?” Actually, she maintains, in their heart-of-hearts most of these know that going back is what they should do – and after all, Danish repatriation provisions are “very favorable” (presumably she means financially). Note that she does go on to make clear, however, that Denmark should not force or even insist that those who cannot return to their old countries do so. (Presumably she means here those who who face persecution or worse in their home countries.) But there are “many thousands” of short-term residents who indeed can return home – and they should.
  
• Those with long-term residence permits. Here Kjærsgaard speaks of “an offer they cannot refuse” (et tilbud . . . de ikke kan sige nej til). But this is Denmark, remember, so nothing out of a Mafia-context is implied. Rather “[These] should understand that Danish society will be helpful with their travels.” In any case, there’s no question of forced repatriation here; “We have to bow down before the fact that Denmark is their homeland.” But anyway, if they have a long-term permit and are really integrated into Danish society, then they’re no part of the problem.
  

SPEAKING OF THE EU, IF WE REALLY MUST . . .

Besides immigration policy, the DF also famously makes waves, both domestically and in those foreign circles that bother to pay attention, with its negative attitude towards the European Union. Indeed, it’s fair to file Mogens Camre in that curious category of MEPs who serve in Strasbourg despite representing political organizations which believe that the EU should not exist, or at least that their respective countries should not participate in it. The very title of the relevant webpage on the DF’s Internet site (all in Danish, naturally) makes things clear: “The DF is an opponent of the EU.”

Of course party-leader Kjærsgaard sings with this choir as the Information interview turns to the EU – even to the extent of hitting some hysterical notes. “If we have a referendum on the EU Constitution, and we accept the Constitution, then we should pull out of the EU.” Huh? That’s right, because a “Yes” vote “would be catastrophic with a constitution that will replace our own. For that’s what will happen.” Kjærsgaard advocates for her country a negotiated “special position” (særordining) with regard to the EU instead. Unfortunately, the interview doesn’t go any deeper into what this might mean; but presumably it would entail in the first place Denmark’s ceasing to be a EU member-state in the usual sense. Ultimately, Kjærsgaard doesn’t think there will be any Danish referendum: the British referendum comes ahead of the Danish, and when the British vote “No” that Constitution will be dead anyway.

This itself is contradictory, if you think about it: the British will vote “No” so Denmark won’t have to decide and instead can stay within its present institutional position vis-à-vis the EU, which the DF opposes? You could also call contradictory the chit-chat at the interview’s end, when Kjærsgaard looks forward to her upcoming long-delayed vacation – at the family summer-house on Santorini Island! No, that’s not in Denmark; it’s in fellow EU member-state Greece, and in fact the very ability of the Kjærsgaard family to actually buy a summer-house there is intimately tied up with the existence of the EU! Rehling does in fact try to point this out, but Kjærsgaard lightly brushes the matter aside. And it probably is a rather unimportant subject; far more important is Kjærsgaard’s assertion earlier in the interview that “one day the Danish People’s Party will be in the government. I’m completely convinced of this.” And she’s probably correct.

                          

However, see this NYT article for the great Brazilian exception, where authorities – spurred by a judge’s ruling – have in turn instituted the requirement that all Americans entering Brazil be photographed and fingerprinted. And that’s all Americans – the article makes mention that even American diplomats, plus visiting US Senator Pat Roberts, were required to deliver up mugshots and prints – and a better solution is hard to imagine for the obvious problem here that the high-and-mighty setting such US policy normally get to remain blissfully unaware of the impact their decisions have on the everyday lives of ordinarily mortals. There just remains the task of getting George W. Bush to pose in an airport somewhere, which would have the collateral benefit of greatly assisting those many hundreds of thousands of anti-US-policy protesters in Western Europe whose own attempts at fashioning a Bush mugshot on the posters and placards they march with in the streets have too often been hopelessly amateurish.

Another reason resistance is less to the new mugshot-and-prints regime is that citizens from a core of 27 countries (mostly Western European) seen as low-risk and/or particularly friendly to US policy (plus Canada) are exempt. Unfortunately, it’s questionable whether the friendliness of the country and the degree of terrorist risk posed by its citizens are very much correlated; you can grasp this by recalling that that gentleman (now locked up in perpetuity) who two years ago tried to blow up a US-bound flight with explosives hidden in his tennis-shoes was a French national, as well as by reading this excellent opinion-piece on the whole issue in today’s Washington Post’s “Outlook” section. (Then there are those of you asking aloud now “What, France? A ‘friendly country’?” Sillies, for all the Franco-American policy differences of recent years, clearly from geopolitical and immigration perspectives France belongs in that camp of 27.)

But back to the new requirements for folks from what you could call the “great unwashed” parts of the world who would like to visit America, and in particular Poland. Yep, the Poles also belong to those “great unwashed,” notwithstanding things like the prompt and firm support the Polish government provided the Bush administration when it came to Iraq. The Poles are not happy with the new requirements, naturally. Surprisingly, though, a review of Polish press coverage of the matter has convinced me that this development itself barely rates “man-bites-dog” newsworthy status. Rather, the new requirements are merely the latest riff on what Poles perceive to be an ongoing insult – namely that they are required to obtain visas to visit the US at all. What’s more, George W. Bush’s announcement of this past week of proposed changes to US immigration law to grant amnesty in certain cases to illegals in the US turned out 1) To be directly relevant to the mugshot-and-photo issue, and 2) To be of much more interest to Poles. Intrigued? Just click on “More…”

Once again, on this issue Gazeta Wyborcza wins the prize for the extensiveness of its coverage; it builds a handy collection of links to its various articles on a page entitled Should We Introduce Visas for the USA?

But Americans who had been thinking about, say, savoring the Old World charm of Kraków’s Stary Rynek (“Old Market,” or the big market-square in the center of the old town) in the spring shouldn’t be alarmed. The brief article there quotes officials from the Polish Foreign Ministry as saying “No, we would be shooting ourselves in the foot; most travelers from the US to Poland are nasze Polonia,” meaning that they are those of Polish heritage visiting the “old country.”

(By the way, I don’t certainly don’t mean to be ironic with that Stary Rynek recommendation! Go check it out! But also don’t forget Wroclaw as another destination: Just as historic (or, in 20th-century terms, even more so), less tourist-overrun, and therefore cheaper, too. Also features a very nice central square for strolling and sitting at ice-cream cafés, by the way.)

A good place to start serious discussion of Polish coverage is with Gazeta’s article entitled Even the Union Won’t Help Us, meaning here “European Union,” of course. This article basically presents the laundry-list of Polish complaints about the whole US visa-regime: In addition to the new mugshot-and-prints rule, from last August each Pole aspiring to travel to the US has had to have an interview with an American consular officer; as of 2002 the whole process has cost $100, and that’s whether you’re ultimately granted the visa or not; as a result, the American federal budget profits mightily from Poles, to the tune of $15-16 million yearly, while of course Americans wishing to travel to Poland need no visas and so contribute no such fees; and, even if you do pay your $100 and get your visa, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be admitted into the country when the time arrives – the article cites several cases of Poles arriving at US airports, only to be put in handcuffs and promptly deported, because US immigration officials saw something wrong about them. (Some of you would say, “Quite right: Just because they managed to hide their terrorist connections from the consular officials doesn’t mean the airport personnel aren’t allowed to discover and pack them away.” But from our further discussion you’ll see that such handcuff-treatment need not have anything to do with being involved with “terrorists.”)

EU MEMBERSHIP NO PANACEA

With all of this, of course, I’m saving the issue identified in the article’s title for last. It seems that even Poland’s imminent membership of the European Union does not necessarily mean that Poland leaves the “great unwashed” simply by joining a multi-national confederation, most of whose members are among those exempt 27. Note the “most”: Greece is an EU member, but Greeks (or, if you prefer as G.W. Bush, “Grecians”) need visas to go to the US. That’s because, as the article notes, US law permits waiving visa requirements only to citizens of those states for which the US embassy and consulates there reject 3% or less of visa applicants. A full one-third of Polish applicants are rejected, says the article and, with the general tightening-up of the visa regime that mugshots-and-prints represents, that 33% can only be expected to go up, not down.

So many Poles are working for al-Qaeda, you might ask? Not in the least; Poles overwhelmingly have their visa applications rejected because they either have a history of extending a stay in the US illegally and/or working there without authorization, or because some consular officer simply thinks that they will. And this brings the issue of such illegal immigration into the picture – an issue that you think would have no place in discussions of terrorism and security (the supposed reasons why all this tightening-up at US airports is happening in the first place, you would think, why nice little old Paraguayan grandmothers are posing for mugshots), but which actually does.

This much we hear straight from US embassy officials in Warsaw, in the Rzeczpospolita article To the States without a Visa?. The quote from an unnamed official at that embassy: “According to mandatory regulations, it is possible to waive the visa-requirement when the number of persons illegally extending their stays in the USA as well as those who are refused a visa when presenting their documents does not exceed 3%. In Poland’s case both are even ten-times greater. Currently there therefore is no formal basis upon which to take that step.” That quote comes at the tail end of an article whose main point is that Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski is dissatisfied with the situation, and promises to put the issue on the agenda when he travels to Washington late this month to meet with President Bush. Kwasniewski himself is quoted as saying “I see no reason my the countries in the Union [i.e. presently] can have liberalized rules and we as a new country of the Union cannot.” (By the way, that summary-article I already cited from Gazeta, Should We Introduce Visas for the USA?, notes that Kwasniewski called Bush about this last Tuesday – i.e. the day after the new mugshot-and-prints regulations took effect. You want to tell me that that was a pre-planned telephone discussion? No way; rather, the wailing from his citizens was reaching the Polish president’s office already on the second day, prompting him to reach for the telephone.)

AMNESTY FOR ONE, AMNESTY FOR ALL

Which brings us to the comments reported in Gazeta Wyborcza from Marek Siwiec, head of the Polish Office of National Security, who in that capacity works under Kwasniewski and will be accompanying him to those Washington talks (Siwiec: At a Certain Moment We Will Have to React). Siwiec takes a somewhat harder line on the issue than does his president; by “we will have to react” he intends precisely to raise the prospect that Poland will impose a visa requirement on Americans in the future, if there doesn’t come to be some “imagination” applied to the whole issue and everything continues to proceed using “bureaucratic methods” instead. Siwiec also hits the following nail right on the head: “The Americans should answer the question whether ‘black work’ [i.e. illegal work in the US] which Poles accept is a threat to their national security, since that is the main reason that leads Poles to be subject to all these inconveniences.” And he places this in the context of the proposals President Bush presented last Wednesday to grant limited amnesties to illegal workers in the US; the proposals might have been aimed at illegal Mexican workers (or, more precisely, at the Latino vote for president), but hey, an illegal worker is an illegal worker; if the one is considered so useful to the American economy (rather than being some sort of terroristic threat to American security), then why can’t the other? Finally, Siwiec takes advantage of his status of not representing Poland diplomatically, not being so high as to actually represent the Polish state internationally, to make some rather frank and bitter observations about the “very difficult decisions” Poland had to make about a year ago about whether to support US policy toward Iraq, and about whether to send Polish troops there; “our evaluations [of the worth of such actions] are not always the same as that of the Americans,” he remarks, “and that also has to do with Iraq’s economic future.”

PULASKI WOULD BE SNUBBED

As if this weren’t enough, there are also a few further commentary pieces in Gazeta Wyborcza. A small one by Darius Rosati, Polish foreign minister in the early 1990s, helps explain why Poles feel so hard done-by: When Poland abolished the visa-requirement for Americans after the break from Communism (which occurred on 15 May 1991, although I got that exact date from yet another article), the Americans promised that the Polish visa-requirement for travel to America would be abolished “when Poland became a democratic country.” It’s been pretty democratic for some time now; and instead we’ve had the visa-fee set at $20 in 1994, and then $100 in 2002. (And see below for how much fun it is for Poles to visit the Warsaw embassy to get that visa.) Then we have the rather clever commentary from Piotr Stasinski: Pulaski Would Not Have Gotten a Visa. To those in need of some background, Casimir Pulaski (together with other figures such as Tadeusz Kosciuszko) was a Polish officer who came to America during the Revolution to join the Continental Army to fight for independence for the Thirteen Colonies from Great Britain. These days, Stasinski writes, Pulaski would be turned away at the embassy by the consular officer, on suspicion of wanting to go to America to engage in “black” military work.

IN FROM THE COLD?

Finally, there is the humorous tale by Lukasz Lipinski (Sojusznik na mrozie – dzien z zycia kolejkowicza, which I translate as “Ally Out in the Cold – A Day of Waiting-in-Line Existence”) of his attempts to go to the US embassy to be interviewed and get his own visa for the US. His appointment for the interview was at 13.00 hours, and he duly arrived fifteen minutes early. But his assumption that that 13.00 time had anything remotely to do with reality would turn out to be only his first naive misconception about dealing with the embassy’s consular bureaucracy. Sorry, I won’t go into too much detail here, even though it’s a shame that this is only in Polish since (just as with my remarks above about the US Senator contributing a mugshot to the Brazilian authorities) this account would work wonders in enlightening those responsible for this policy about what they are really putting people through with it. How about this: Lipinski was sharp enough to note ahead of time on the Internet that mobile telephones are not allowed in the embassy (not that all vital information on that website was kept up-to-date), so he didn’t bring his, but of course many others weren’t so enlightened. Where to put their mobiles during their visit? Obviously not in the embassy itself – they’re not allowed there. They found out that the travel agent across the street was doing a booming business in mobile telephone baby-sitting – for a fee, of course. “Long live the American spirit of entrepreneurialism!” Lipinski exults. That “Ally Out in the Cold” part of his title, by the way, refers to the fact that by far the longest portion of his visit was spent in a line that extended way out-of-doors into the winter’s cold; “next time I’ll be sure to take care of my visa when it’s summer,” he thinks to himself. But he’s still thankful for small pleasures: for example, in the section on the visa form that reads “name of clan or tribe” they allow you to answer with “does not apply.”

Accompanying Lipinski’s account is another article, Ambasada USA sie tlumaczy. Let’s see: tlumaczyc sie means “to explain oneself”; could this be “US Ambassador Explains Himself”? No such luck: The ambassador is busy with other things more in line with Bush administration policy (meaning he’s smoothing the way in Poland for wealthy Republican businessmen). Ambasada actually means “embassy,” and it’s embassy press-spokesman Dick Custin whom we have here responding to a few questions posed by reporter Wojciech Szacki. Like “Why do people waiting to apply for visas have to stand outside in the cold for so long?” “Local conditions don’t allow everybody being allowed inside. We’re working on doubling the size of the waiting-room.” “Why do we have to pay $100 for a visa. And why do we have to pay 4,44 zloties per minute just to call the embassy?” “The amount of the charges has to do with the increase in costs and inconvenience after the tragedies of September 11. It’s the same everywhere in the world. . . . The telephone charges only cover the costs of the telephone service – the American government does not profit from them.”

                          

I had hoped to find something interesting to tell you about the referendum’s result in the national press of Germany: the nation that, after all, was once the guiding power behind the idea of one single currency for all of the EU, yet which now, by its misbehavior in getting its own fiscal house in order and staying under the 3%-of-GDP limit for government budget deficits, is quite possibly driving away those EU members (such as Sweden) who do not use the euro but are/were contemplating that. But the on-line German newspapers that I’ve looked at for today aren’t very on-the-ball: they’ll tell you little else than what you already will have been able to find out from your own newspaper of choice (with one exception, noted below). OK, they quote Bundeskanzler Schröder lamenting the continued absence of Sweden from the ranks of EU countries using the euro. Well, he would lament, wouldn’t he? I’d definitely file that bit of news under “dog-bites-man.”

The national press that I came across that handles well the issues and implications arising out of Sweden’s “No” is the press in the Netherlands – a country that certainly was for the introduction of the euro back in the late-80s/early-90s when the Maastricht Treaty was just over the horizon, but, despite its enthusiasm, was hardly influential on the scale of Germany to insist that “the euro will happen.” Oh, and it’s also a country that is doing just fine in holding to the rules and keeping its budget deficit under 3%. Actually, it’s a country which, far more than others, might actually be counter-acting French and Germany to make the euro a more attractive proposition to those countries still not using it. I’m referring here to the stink Dutch politicians are starting to raise about the way Germany and France are violating the Stability Pact. The big countries can get away with that as they choose, the Dutch object, whereas small countries trying the same thing would run straight into penalties meted out by the European Commission.

(Or maybe the complaint is slightly different. I remember that Portugal – definitely a small country – last year also violated the Stability Pact with a government deficit of over 3%. The Commission then also deliberated solemnly about lowering the boom on the Portuguese with the prescribed fines, but in the end decided not to. Germany was also violating the Pact, but they weren’t about to fine political powerhouse Germany, and then going ahead and fining Portugal anyway would have exposed the hypocrisy for all the world to see. So maybe the argument instead is that if you allow some to get away with violating the Pact, then you have to allow everyone to get away with it, and the whole thing gets carted off to Hell in a Handbasket.)

Well, some Dutch politicians are starting to say towards the whole mess “avast that, ye scurvy dogs!” – or words to that effect – and to insist that Germany and France indeed be assessed the fines that the Stability Pact prescribes for its violators. And this to me seems very fertile ground for a EuroSavant weblog entry in the near future, finding and discussing what has appeared in the press about this.

But for today, let’s first take a look at what the Dutch newspaper Trouw has to say about the Swedish “No” to the euro.

It has quite a lot to say: one article basically reporting the results, and then two accompanying commentary pieces. One of them, Moord Lindh/Geschokt, maar ongebroken (“The Lindh Murder/Shocked, but Unbroken”), essentially congratulates the Swedish people for their level-headedness in the face of the horrors of the past week. Anna Lindh’s murderer (whatever may have been his motives) only accomplished one thing when it came to the euro-referendum, namely a healthy turn-out of eligible voters actually going to vote, at a rate in excess of 80%. They streamed to the polling stations to vote in her honor – but then voted not necessarily in her honor, but for what they had determined to vote for all along, i.e. mostly against the euro.

And then a back-handed compliment to the Dutch, as well as the Swedes: When such a shocking murder occurs right before an important voting event – like, for example, Pim Fortuyn’s assassination in the Netherlands just before the Dutch general elections in May of 2002 – the temptation is great to postpone the planned election/referendum to allow the powerful emotions that it awakes in that society to subside before it has to make such an important decision. But any such postponement can awaken powerful emotions itself; it’s best simply go ahead with the voting and trust in the collective maturity of the electorate, something Swedish voters have clearly shown that they possess.

A quick reaction from the EuroSavant side: Yes, Swedish voters showed great maturity, but I’m not so sure that the Dutch election that immediately followed Pim Fortuyn’s murder provided the convincing example that going ahead with the referendum as planned was the correct course of action. For you could say that going ahead with the Dutch elections last year right after Fortuyn’s murder was not the right thing to do; determined to “not let the murderer win,” the Dutch electorate catapulted Fortuyn’s LPF (List Pim Fortuyn) party up into the second-strongest position in the entire country. This soon turned out to be a mistake; the LPF turned out to be little more than a collection of second-rate characters with extremist views and little notion of how politics was supposed to work in this country. The end-result was that Holland “lost” almost a year to ineffective government, before the inevitable government break-up and early return to the polls in January of this year allowed the electorate to recognize its mistake and correct it. Sad to say, the murderer in a sense did win (although he supposedly gunned down Fortuyn out of his animal-rights convictions; a really strange connection of thought with deed that really makes you question whether he was really acting on his own, but let’s not get into that here); the LPF was nothing without Pim Fortuyn himself, because only Pim Fortuyn had the wit, the determination, the intelligence, to advance some ideas (a few of them perhaps not so pretty) whose advancement had apparently been overdue within the Dutch polity for quite some time. When I heard that the Swedish government was determined to hold the referendum anyway after Lindh’s death, I was ready to write an essay, to add to those listed over on the left side of this weblog, expanding on my argument above – namely “Of course you want to postpone voting on such an important, and irreversible, economic decision!” The short window in which to do so (before the holding of the referendum itself would make the point moot), combined with “outside world” intrusions, meant that I didn’t get around to that; and at this point I think I do need to congratulate the Swedish electorate that, with their electoral maturity, they would have proven wrong what I would have written. For the irrational, soft-headed “sympathy effect” from Lindh’s death, putting the “Yes” side over the top and bringing the euro to Sweden, did not happen.

Let’s go on to Trouw’s second commentary piece, a much more interesting one entitled Zweden/Een deuk in het mooie zelfbeeld, or “Sweden/A Dent in a Pretty Self-Image.” It seems that Sweden has had a pretty self-image of itself indeed since the Second World War, at least according to Åke Daun, professor emeritus of ethnology (the article doesn’t reveal where). Sweden was a rich, peaceful, serene society where every one of its citizens was taken care of – an avant-garde commonwealth, even, an inspiration to other nations. That’s one reason why the 1994 decision (and referendum) over entry into the European Union was so controversial – in one sense, it was seen as Sweden lowering herself into a close association with a bunch of other countries not so far advanced. Even after EU accession, that feeling of superiority has persisted, according to Prof. Daun: “We talk about ‘Europe’ as if we ourselves are not a part of it. [British people, perk up your ears!] It is a place where very rich, but also very poor people live, where children sometimes get a pedagogical slap, and where the phenomenon ‘housewife’ exists. For Swedes this shows that the other European countries are slower than we. We march ahead, the rest follow later.” That also explains the stiff resistance to the introduction of the euro – again, of a “lowering” of the country that is alleged to be necessary. (And indeed, the misdemeanors of the French and German governments could make entry into the eurozone look all the more like such a “lowering.”)

After Anna Lindh’s murder, as the article’s title implies, that feeling of superiority has taken a dent. And so has the sheer feeling among Swedes of having a society which is in control of itself. And while there is zero evidence that the assassin was anything other than a native Swede – indeed, the department store security camera photos which Swedish newspapers (and others) have now printed (like, here) show that he is a young, Caucasian man – according to Prof. Daun this feeling of being out of control arises out of the steadily-changing ethnic composition of Swedish society. These days a full 20% of the population was born somewhere else, or is not of Swedish ethnicity, and unfortunately by-and-large these people stick to themselves in communities at the edges of Swedish cities. They also are, inevitably, relatively underprivileged economically.

And that recalls a remarkable thing about Sweden: that although Sweden has also been affected by the phenomenon of an influx of “non-Swedes” into the country (immigrants, asylum-seekers), an anti-immigrant political party on the pattern of the Flemish Vlaams Blok, or the Danish Folkeparti, or, yes, the Netherlands’ LPF, has yet to arise. That is said to be mainly due to the topic of immigrants and what to do about them being still a taboo subject in Swedish political discourse. The dominant Social-Democratic Party of Prime Minister Persson (and of Anna Lindh) certainly has nothing to say on the subject; neither do any of the other six Swedish political parties with representation in the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament.

But that reluctance of the actors making up the current Swedish political establishment to address this issue, that is becoming more and more of a concern to the average Swedish voter, just means that the political pressure keeps building up unseen. And while Anna Lindh’s murder apparently did not constitute an incident sufficient to set off this political explosion, the result of the referendum can also be interpreted as an indication of this built-up pressure. Seemingly the entirety of this establishment – politics and business – was for the adoption of the euro, after all, but the man-in-the-street said “No” anyway. And it seems (as reported in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) that “No” voters were disproportionally dominant among lower-income and lower-education voters – precisely those voters the most ready to get agitated about “foreigners” coming into the country and stealing “their” jobs and their houses.

As a final note, let me briefly mention the commentary from the Algemeen Dagblad, by Niels de Groot, entitled ‘Ja voor Anna? Mijn hart zegt nee’, or “Yes for Anna? My Heart Says No.” Here’s the interesting tidbit Mr. de Groot brings to light: If Sweden were to adopt the euro, then the Swedes would at least get to pick one, or maybe three, or maybe up to eight neat Swede pictures or symbols to put on one side of the eurocoins they would then be allowed to mint. (I write about this topic of the various national symbols on the eurocoins here.) Now, if they’re anything like the other monarchies which are EU members and have adopted the euro (i.e. Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain), you would think that the Swedish king Carl Gustav XVI would figure prominently on that Swedish eurocoinage. But Lars Leijonborg, leader of the Swedish Folkparti, or “People’s Party” (which is pro-euro) actually proposed that, should Sweden accept the euro, Anna Lindh’s portrait be put on those coins! Oooh – a cheap move! And it makes it all the more impressive that the Swedes would have nothing of that sort of emotional milking of Lindh’s death for a “Yes” vote.

                          

Here goes: there’s a pair of excellent articles I can recommend on the current on-line site for Die Zeit on how America is driving away the international scientists it needs (Sorry, Einstein) and the ambitious, hard-working labor it needs generally (Hot Dogs from the “Terrorists”) by its policy of treating them all as potential terrorists before, during, and after they come to the States to live. Of course, Germany’s record on attracting skilled immigration is much less to write home about itself – all too often, the immigrants’ hostels where they are temporarily housed get burned down by mobs of skinheads – but of course that has no direct bearing on the authors’ appealing analyses of how US society is stifling those very demographic sources that historically have made its economy, scientific establishment, arts scene, etc. so dynamic and world-beating.