Schengen Schadenfreude
8th June 2012
Multi-culti chickens come home to roost … and poop all over everything.
The Schengen Area consists of a contiguous group of twenty-five European countries that have agreed by treaty to suspend border controls and travel restrictions within their common territory. Five member states of the European Union — Britain, Ireland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Cyprus — are not signatories of the Schengen Agreement, while three non-EU countries — Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland — have signed on.
The weakness of the Schengen provisions was highlighted last year during the Camp of the Saints crisis in the Mediterranean. Libyans and Tunisians who illegally gained access to Europe by landing on the island of Lampedusa were given temporary residence permits by the Italian authorities. Once they had these valuable pieces of paper in hand, they were theoretically able to travel wherever they wished within the Schengen Area. Since Italy was not their intended final destination — France, Britain, Germany, and Sweden being more highly prized for their lavish welfare benefits — many of the newcomers immediately attempted to travel northwards.
Handing out residence permits was a somewhat cynical ploy on the part of the Italian authorities, who obviously hoped to hand off their cultural enrichment problems to other parts of Europe. The French were having none of it, however, and sent the Tunisian interlopers straight back to Italy, Schengen or not.