In France, the generous welfare state can no longer meet the needs of the many impoverished French people who need its help. The story of how one such group — university students — just barely survive, because the government has been steadily diminishing its support of students for years, while the costs of living have gone steadily up, can be found here: “Soaring costs, shrinking government grants plunge French students into crisis,” by Umit Donmez, AA, November 4, 2022:
The cost of living has become unbearable for many university students in France, as inflation continues to erode their purchasing power, which was already not very strong to begin with.
A viral video posted Tuesday by Maelle, a 20-year-old political science student, bears witness to this tragic situation.
It shows Maelle in tears, crying in distress over her daily life. She denounced in particular the paltry amount of her grant from France’s Regional Center for University and School Works.
“Every year for the past four years, they have reduced my grant,” she said, explaining that she gets a monthly grant of less than $100 to meet her needs while she needs $400 a month just to cover her rent. She sees it as an impossible task.
She also explained that her parents, who live in Mayotte – a small island off East Africa that technically is a part of France – “don’t have the means” to pay for her studies and that as a result, she has to work 20 hours a week to try to support herself.
Maelle explained that her father is unemployed and that if her mother got a raise, it would all go just to cope with the price of food, which is very high in France’s overseas territories.
On Mayotte, cheese costs €10 ($9.78), she said, adding that with a total monthly income of around $2,000 for two people, her parents have only the “bare minimum.”
“My studies are taking a hit, but I’m working and I’m not saving anything,” she added, before asking how many hours she will have to work and how hard to pay for her life.
The body that gives the grants responded by saying that it “can’t do anything,” she said.
She added that after asking the body for emergency support, she was refused, even after she worked the entire summer to make more money.
Maelle’s poignant video has been viewed over 4 million times. A crowdfunding campaign was launched, and more than $13,000 was raised, leading her to share the money raised with student support groups.
Maelle’s life of distress and constant worrying is far from uncommon, and indeed is felt by hundreds of thousands of French university students….
This nightmare situation is not confined to students. The French government has not been raising its funding for the aged poor, has not enlarged the housing subsidies for them, or the amounts spent on food aid for them. But the question is why? What has put such pressure on the French welfare system? The article above does not say, but everyone in France knows that one of the main reasons for the welfare state’s distress is the diversion of, and drain on, resources to support a growing population of Musilm immigrants. These immigrants arrive without any resources, nor any marketable skills to make them employable for something other than the most menial of tasks. Many of them, once in France, have been in no rush to find jobs, preferring to be supported by the state. They benefit from free or subsidized housing, free medical care, free education, family allowances, even unemployment payments without having first held a job. Unlike the French, these Muslim immigrants have never paid into the system from which they are now receiving benefits.
Nor is this support for the immigrants, running into billions of dollars annually, the only drain on the French state. The rate of criminality for Muslim migrants is sky-high; 70% of the prisoners in France are Muslims, though they make up only 10% of the population. Most of the most violent crimes, such as rape and murder, are overwhelmingly committed by Muslims. The drug trade is entirely in the hands of Arab gangs. The state must now pay for more police, more detectives, more judges, more prosecutors, more court-appointed lawyers, more prison guards, more prisons because of these Muslim criminals. It has been calculated that each prisoner now costs the French state $75,000 annually.
The French will have to do several things to rescue their welfare state.
First, they should halt all further immigration by people from countries already “overrepresented” in France – meaning, though without saying openly, all the maghrebins, North Africans chiefly from Algeria and Morocco.
Second, instead of continuing to endure the great expense of supporting prisoners, the French government should expel back to their countries of origin all those immigrants, already in France, who are found guilty of property crimes – burglary, robbery, fraud. Let their home countries deal with them as they wish. Some may. be imprisoned, while others may be let loose. But they will no longer be an expense for the French state. And once expelled, they should have no possibility of returning to France.
As for those convicted of violent crimes, such as rape and murder, the French government should make agreements with the Muslim states from which the convicted criminals come, so that once repatriated, they will serve out their sentences in the prisons of their countries of origin, with France providing the receiving countries with modest payments for the prisoners’ upkeep – far less than the $75,000 each prisoner costs the state in a French prison. They will remain locked up in the much more unpleasant and forbidding prisons of North Africa.
Third, immigrants to France should not be eligible for family allowances beyond the second child. Muslims already have much larger families than the indigenous French. As of now, the more children in a family, the greater the allowance from the state. Such subsidies encourage those large Muslim families. Such support has to stop.
Fourth, immigrants should not be allowed to receive state benefits during the first three years following their entry. This will force them — both men and women — to work. And if they cannot find employment, the state should provide menial and low-paying jobs for them. Those who refuse to take those jobs will be promptly expelled. The days of subsisting on the support of the French taxpayer must come to an end. How many people will set off from Algeria or Morocco or Tunisia to France if they know that the cornucopia of benefits has ended, and they will be required to work to survive?
By taking such stern but perfectly reasonable measures, the French welfare state may slowly recover, and the indigenous French poor, from university students to the aged, will be able to again receive the aid they need, and deserve.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
So when will our Ivy League schools go belly-up, so that they’ll no longer turn out misanthropists out to destroy our country?
Fitna says
Good suggestions Hugh, will the rich elites like Macron pay any attention? They’ll probably say “let them eat kebab.”
Should they fail to institute radical changes (like expelling Muslims), their welfare system will crash, causing perhaps millions of the poor and desperate of France to become even more impoverished and desperate.
The Muslims will leave once all the money has run out and they’ll find another rich, fat, stupid country to mooch off of, like Germany until they’ve sucked them dry too.
Who could blame them? If you benefit foreigners while throwing your own citizens under the bus, this is exactly what is going to happen.
Historian Will Durant’s observation about the Islamic invasion of India applies to all free nations today:
“The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.”
France should also know better as they were invaded by Muslims before and had to repel them. Partly the voting population is also to blame.
They knew full well that Macron would do nothing to help their country while Muslims kept invading and draining their system, but they kept voting for him and his weak self-serving party.
While Marine Le Pen has become more ‘moderate’ over time, she’d still be a big improvement over Macron, though Eric Zemmour would be the best choice for the country.
Maybe it will take much more suffering of ordinary people to realize they need to vote for the right wing parties to get out of this mess. The Muslim vote is also influencing elections as well, so ordinary voters need to take that into account.
mick says
Political science! Better to get sponsorship to study marine biology, mechanical engineering….
Evidence of the disconnect between Unis and real world needs, can be seen hanging from gantries on the M25.
Jim J Fox says
What are you babbling about? Any relevance to this article?
Jim J Fox says
It’s been said many times but what happened to truth, honesty, facts?
All now unacceptable to media, academia & politicians. No hope for this beautiful but abused World. All it has left is Wokeness & idiotic conspiracy ‘theories’.
Jim J Fox says
Spot on analysis, Fitna. That Will Durant quote encapsulates the issues perfectly.
Fitna says
Thanks Jim, agreed on Durant and well said also.
Until the Left stops demonizing the Right and starts to go after the Muslims, western civilization will continue to spiral downwards.
Our media/politicians still don’t realize Islam is an existential threat to us. If this was happening 1000 years ago, maybe they could be excused for a lack of information, but today we’re flooded with all kinds of data that only a fool would not be able to recognize the danger.
We need courageous leaders like Geert Wilders and Zemmour to speak out loudly against Muslims and Islam, until most of the population is behind them and then real change can happen.
We’ll probably also need to confront Muslims and the Leftists who support them to expose their arguments for the lies they are and defeat them in the public square.