ARTICLE: “EU’s New Tack on Immigration: Leaders Talk Up ‘Brain Circulation’ to Cure Shrinking Work Force,” by John W. Miller, Wall Street Journal, 10 February 2006, p. A8.

Europe has always attracted Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa primarily in the same way we attract the bulk of Hispanics from down south: give us your poor and ambitious and largely undereducated and we’ll have them do the 3D (dirty, dangerous, difficult) jobs that we can’t find workers for.

That collection of low-end workers, when combined with the high-end ones that America so naturally attracts (our Muslims are better than your Muslims!), sends back to home countries over $100 billion in remittances each year (just $72B in 2001 and now $126B according to IMF). The entire OECD development aid package (meaning all the foreign aid the Core sends to the Gap) each year is just around $60B, so this flow is hugely important to shrinking the Gap (or keeping the worst parts afloat in the meantime).

What this article says is that Europe is beginning to realize it not only needs the 3D Muslims, but the more educated ones that we naturally attract. Why? The demographic aging of Europe proceeds with so much more speed than our version here, so they think the EU will be tens of millions short on skilled workers in coming decades (20m by 2030).

Think Europe is the “great alternative” and the rising superpower that will lead the world in the future? Or do you still see it aping America as it tries to catch up, ad infinitum?