It is naïve to suggest Europe can sustain mass migration from Africa

Your editorial (“It’s time for a cultural shift”, Irish Examiner, April 21) argues that Europe needs to accept permanent large-scale immigration from Africa and the Middle East because of the poverty, tyranny and religious extremism which bedevils those regions.

It calls for permanent mass migration into Europe in the wake of the Mediterranean boat tragedies of recent weeks.

Alas, this knee-jerk humanitarian impulse completely ignores the likely long term

consequences for Europe itself.

The chaos in Africa and the Middle East is deep-rooted, well-nigh intractable and unlikely to be resolved even in our own lifetimes.

People who now advocate open borders for Europe never say what limits there should be on numbers coming in; and surely even the most naïve when looking at this issue don’t seriously advocate that the whole of Africa and the Arab world should have the right of asylum on Europe’s doorstep.

It is absurd to suggest that Europe should take millions of migrants from those regions over the next few years and decades.

Europe has enough problems as it is with high unemployment, sluggish growth and creaking welfare states.

Mass migration, as called for by well-meaning humanitarians, would be catastrophic for Europe’s society and long-term cohesion.

You are also seriously wrong when you say that migration is merely a matter of individuals wanting to move elsewhere.

It is not; people are not just individuals, they carry their culture and values with them, and the plain fact is that many or most of those intending to come to Europe do not share the values of the West and are likely to be a threat to our social fabric as well as our resources.

The thousands of second-generation migrants travelling from Europe to join ISIS are an example of this.

At the end of the day it is not Europe’s responsibility to take into its bosom the victims of generations of tyranny, incompetence, corruption and religious mania which has been the curse of Africa and the Arab world since, ironically, they won their independence from Europe.

That Africa and the Arab world ruined their futures should not mean that citizens in Gothenburg, Amsterdam or Connemara for that matter should suffer for it.

Dr Frank Giles

Ballsbridge

Dublin 4