France and its deportation of Roma (Gypsies) -- echoes of the US?

[SoCalDem]

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2010/0901/France-and-its-deportation-of-Roma-Gypsies-echoes-of-the-US

By the Monitor's Editorial Board / September 1, 2010

This summer’s stories from France about the deportations of some 700 Roma, or Gypsies, might sound familiar to Americans embroiled in the debate over illegal immigration. The French government says it’s cracking down on crimes committed by Roma and breaking up their illegal camps. The Obama administration, too, is making crime a priority in deportations of illegal aliens. The political atmosphere in both countries is also highly charged.

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They are shocked, too, that Mr. Sarkozy has proposed a list of crimes for which naturalized foreign-born people would lose their French citizenship. The list includes endangering police, female circumcision, polygamy, and domestic slavery. (In the United States, a push is on to drop automatic citizenship for US-born children of illegal immigrants.) The French president’s actions against the Roma and his proposals relating to foreigners – and also his support for a burqa ban on Muslim women – have divided the country and his government. In the US, too, a new anti-illegal immigration law in Arizona has roiled American politics in advance of this fall’s elections.

But the Roma deportations also ring with a European timbre. About 10 million to 12 million Roma live in countries that are now members of the European Union, having left their homeland in India in the 11th century. Many of today’s Roma live in Slavic-speaking countries, such as Romania. Often leading a nomadic lifestyle, they’ve suffered discrimination and purges of varying intensity. The Nazis singled them out for persecution and extermination,which makes France’s deportations an extremely sensitive issue (the pope, among others, has spoken out against the deportations).

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France’s answer to these very real social problems may today be deportation, but that won’t work four years from now. Europe’s open internal borders mean France – and other EU countries that have deported Roma – will have to find a way to live with this population (and vice versa, by the way). That won’t be easy. It will mean distinguishing between criminals and noncriminals, between wayward individuals and communities that are simply different. Quite challenging will be finding a way to alleviate poverty among a group that treasures its apartness from society and its institutions. As in America, when these kinds of challenges loom, political hyperbole only makes them more difficult to solve