Fear, belated expressions of welcome and refusals to yield have all greeted Europe’s migrant crisis in France, with the French far-right even comparing the influx to the barbarian invasions in the fourth century, reports The New York Times.
But amid the apocalyptic warnings, a wounding fact has been largely passed over in silence by politicians here: The migrants are voting with their feet, and they are not choosing France.
National pride barely acknowledges it. But tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis are streaming toward Germany, while only a comparative handful make their way here. Migrants crowding onto the trains in Hungary shout, “Germany, Germany!” But they do not shout, “France, France.”
The country’s most visible encampment of migrants is perched at Calais, looking longingly across the Channel toward Britain — a permanent reproach to the country in which these migrants are now pitching tents.
“France doesn’t create the conditions to make them want to stay,” said Jean-François Corty, the head of Médecins du Monde, a nongovernmental organization that has worked extensively with the migrants at Calais.
But France’s relative lack of appeal has not blunted the wariness, or even fearmongering, about immigration that has helped fuel support for the far-right here.
“Unless the French people take action, the invasion of the migrants will be every bit the same as that of the fourth century, and could have the same consequences,” Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front party, warned this week.
Experts, analysts and academics dismissed her remark: there is no such invasion in France, nor is one likely.
Last week, officials from France’s refugees office rushed to Munich, seeking 1,000 migrants to relieve some of the pressure on its harried neighbor. But as thousands crowded into the city, the French officials came back with only 600 people.
It was not, insisted Pascal Brice, the refugee office director, because they found France unattractive. “They were doing what all the others were doing, staying in Germany,” Mr. Brice said. Besides, he explained, “there was no more arrival of refugees” after Germany closed its borders.
Yet many were already in place there. As Mr. Brice acknowledged, “There were thousands of migrants in Munich; we were there to help the Germans.”
The migrants’ “first reaction was surprise” as the French made their pitch, Mr. Brice said. “They didn’t expect to find another country there,” offering to help.
The surprise should not have been unexpected. France, with its high unemployment and incendiary political rhetoric about keeping migrants out and borders closed, has not exactly put out a welcome mat, in economic or emotional terms, said a number of experts on the question.
There has been no French equivalent of the maternal image of Chancellor Angela Merkel offering succor. Pro-migrant demonstrations in France have been small compared with the hundreds of Germans who have flocked to train stations to help.
“When one isn’t doing so well oneself, one is not all that eager to have guests in one’s home,” said Patrick Weil, a French historian of immigration now teaching at Yale, noting also the traumatic memory of displacement present in thousands of German families dating from World War II.