Europe’s immigration problems are not so difficult to fix. But they must be fixed quickly before the continent changes out of recognition.  

In military history, there are instances in which one side unleashes a completely new weapon or form of combat, leaving the adversary so entirely off guard that they are unable to muster any effective defense. The Eurasian rider nomads are an example; their archers stunned the Europeans with their ability to shoot accurately from the back of a galloping horse, an assault method never seen before. Their incredibly agile hit-and-run mounted troops fired off flurries of arrows while attacking at high speed, and then, in a maneuver called the “Parthian shot,” they continued to shoot backwards over their shoulders as they sped away. 

The longbow upended medieval combat by adding unparalleled lethal range; the Byzantine use of Greek fire introduced shock and awe into naval battles; the British use of tanks in the First World War brought mobility and firepower to static trench warfare. These are the black swans of combat—forms of attack that you can’t prepare for, because you can’t imagine them. You must then wrap your mind around what just happened, regroup, and alter your defensive and offensive arsenal. If you can’t manage that fast enough, you’re going down. 

Europe is presently under attack from just such an unexpected, black-swan form of warfare. The undercover invaders are wreaking havoc, upending the economies, undermining civil security with hitherto unseen levels of crime, splitting domestic politics, degrading the education systems, gridlocking the courts, and altering the cherished cultural practices of their host nations. While also plotting terrorist attacks, building ISIS cells, and unleashing a wave of sexual assault. European governments are struggling even to grasp what is happening, let alone formulate an effective response.

When Europe Opened the Immigration Floodgates

The initial error of the Europeans was to fall for the illusion, in 2014, that the mass of arriving persons were primarily migrants and refugees. It was the height of the Syrian crisis, and in a combination of soft-heartedness and pragmatism, the Europeans assumed that the people streaming across their borders must be Syrians. Spinning the fantasy forward, they imagined these would mostly be nice, middle-class Syrian families, with a preponderance of medical doctors among them. They would integrate easily. It would be a perfect fit. As soon transpired, they weren’t mostly Syrian, and they weren’t mostly families or middle class. The majority were uneducated single younger men from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and—as the floodgates opened—from territories beyond. By 2024, there were 11 million refugees (excluding illegal immigrants) from 147 countries.

The normal circumstance is that migrants and refugees come to your country because they need to leave their original homeland. They appreciate the sanctuary and try to be pleasant, building new lives within your physical and social boundaries. Some initial difficulties are to be expected; the newcomers, after all, are unfamiliar with the language and with local customs and practices, their professional qualifications may not be recognized, or they may not have any locally employable skills, and multiple practical matters must be handled. 

They may be shocked and traumatized by the circumstances of their departure. Dependent on the kindness of strangers and the assistance of a foreign bureaucracy, you expect them to be generally cooperative, willing to learn and adjust, and appreciative of the money, help, and sympathy they are receiving. And in previous European experience, that was exactly how things went, which is why they can’t be blamed too much for missing the early warning signs indicating that they were dealing with something entirely new.

Consider the Bosnian refugees, for example. Like the current migrants and refugees, they too were Muslim. Arriving abruptly in 1992, fleeing the incredibly bloody and brutal ethnic cleansing and massacres of the Balkan Wars, they, too, were traumatized. Mostly from conservative rural areas, modern Western city life was an adjustment. Their adamant plan was to return to the farms and homes they had left behind. Still, as the conflict continued, they began to put down roots and, ultimately, over 90 percent of them stayed and settled in their European countries of refuge—primarily Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Denmark. Their current unemployment rate is lower than that of the domestic population, including women. 

They have maintained their identity and can be termed a “mixing bowl” success. They have a well-organized and vibrant subculture, with cultural centers, mosques, restaurants, clubs, volunteer aid organizations, connections with the “homeland,” and active community networks that maintain Bosnian cultural, religious, and social traditions while living constructively and comfortably in Austrian society. There was never pressure from the public for the Bosnian refugees to be repatriated; on the contrary, they received widespread sympathy and support. Many ordinary families volunteered to host them in their own homes, as they later also did with the Ukrainians. The current population of Ukrainians is also generally doing well—learning German, dispersing into the general population, and within a short time, finding employment. 

Indigenous society, caught by surprise and hamstrung by its guilt over past colonialism and Germany’s fascism, plus an entrenched liberal self-image of noble ubertolerance, is unable to react. It hasn’t even properly understood what is happening. 

I know this is controversial, so let’s first look at the math in a non-European context. In Israel, the extreme orthodox Haredi segment of the Jewish population holds a vision of the proper and desirable social order that is at odds with the country’s modern, progressive, mainstream society. They believe in gender segregation, reject secular and scientific learning, and consider the study of Torah to be the only worthwhile activity. Most of their men eschew wage-earning professions and live instead on government subsidies and on money earned by their wives. The wives believe that financially supporting the husband’s lifelong full-time Torah study by working, birthing, and raising as many children as possible is the fulfillment of a woman’s role in the divine order. The Haredim disapprove of the state of Israel as an entity and vigorously oppose the recent attempts to include them in the military draft. Though disengaged from their nation, for tactical reasons, they maintain high voter turnout, voting as a bloc and as instructed by their rabbinical leadership. This makes them a critical factor in coalition building and lends them considerable weight. It’s a clever strategy. No need to fight, no need for the men to slog away at boring jobs. They need only industriously impregnate their women. 

Currently, the Haredi population accounts for about 21 percent of Israel’s Jewish population. At their rate of 6.7 children per woman, projections place them near or over 50 percent of the Jewish Israeli population by the end of the century. They make no secret of their wish to impose strict religious rules of behavior on the rest of the population, and by their numbers, they will be able to do that. Their triumph will, alas, be short-lived. Israel will have a population half of which is pacifist, its males economically unproductive and, with their sedentary scholarly lifestyle, not physically fit, its females pregnant, lactating, and overworked; it won’t make them very competitive in a neighborhood dominated by hyperactive, aggressive Arab males and their equally procreation-inclined wives. The Haredim seem on course to win control of Israel, briefly, until they lose it all to the Arabs. And the secular Israeli state is hastening this outcome by paying bonuses for each additional child. This program failed to incentivize its modern citizens and ended up benefiting only the minority that is poised to bring the house down. 

Now we turn to Europe. Let’s stay with demographics. To sustain a human population, you need a fertility rate of 2.1 children per couple. Not a single European country currently reaches that minimum number. This is a big problem, and Europeans are aware of it. But their concern is an odd one, focusing on the arguably least important consequence. They worry only that there won’t be enough younger working people to cover the pensions of their aging population. Shouldn’t they be asking who will carry forward their civilization, represent and defend their values, build on their scientific and industrial accomplishments, enjoy the music, art, theater, and fashion that represent their roots and were developed over many centuries, and create more of this for the future, and celebrate their traditions and beliefs? Are they content to write all of that off, as long as someone, anyone, is there to pay into the pension fund? (Spoiler alert: that’s not working out either). 

The effort to conquer Western civilization was twice repulsed at the Gates of Vienna, but now, aggressors have realized that the prize can be won so much more easily, that entry and conquest can be so much simpler. Instead of frontally attacking your target’s fortified walls, maneuver yourself inside and then leverage the vulnerabilities of your adversary to paralyze his defense. In this case, two vulnerabilities are key: first, the European mindset, a mixture of guilt and smugly prideful masochistic liberalism. Second, their modern lifestyle is not family-conducive. The combination of many single parents and dual-career couples, a belief in personal self-fulfillment, and in female equality creates great practical difficulties for the rearing of one, let alone several, children. Those are fine and excellent values, except that Western European modernity failed to develop in parallel some effective new ways also to accommodate the human and societal basics of family and reproduction. 

Enter the Afghans, Pakistanis, Syrians, Iraqis, Chechens, Somalis, and others who have no such issues. They happily produce 3-6 children per non-self-fulfilled, non-equal woman. And like the Israeli state, Western European governments too had in the past set up programs to reward multiple childbirth with multiple financial benefits. The policy was aimed at their own young couples, but money—especially in the modest amounts offered—was not the principal obstacle, so that didn’t work. Now, though, it is creating a rentier class of foreign men living off the wombs of their women. 

And this group shows a pronounced and overt disinclination to join European society, to adapt, integrate, or be productive. They are here to live in their own familiar fashion, on the tab of the contemptible and gullible European hosts. Their posture is one of rejection and indeed of hostility; they are averse to work and prone to crime; instead of trying to understand the rules and laws, they are focused on learning how to play the system. 

European leaders of the centrist parties know this, but they feel trapped. To their left is the self-righteous political correctness wing that excuses and defends anything associated with refugees or migrants. To their right are populist nationalists ready to rile up public sentiment. In what they believe is the interest of stability, they have actively been concealing the facts, withholding or fudging the statistics, and explaining away the problems as temporary, while hoping that, somehow, things will magically get better and integration will happen. They seek comfort through reference to earlier successful immigrant experiences, in some cases with the same nationalities that are so problematic today. 

The difference lies in the numbers (the previous numbers were much smaller), the class origins of the previous immigrants (they were better educated and were receptive to Western values), and most importantly, the intentions (they came with the wish to be accepted, to fit in, and to succeed). There is zero indication that the current immigrant cohort intends to adapt and integrate, and every indication that many are pursuing the exact opposite goal. And there are clear signs that the second generation of this cohort will not be better, but considerably more problematic than the first. 

Any objective expert, looking at the indicators and the numbers, will tell you that it is highly unlikely this indiscriminate European mass-immigration experiment will end well. That’s, unless all you want is bodies, any bodies, populating your land. But here is the definition of a nation: it is “a country considered as a body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language.” The migrants will increase Europe’s population, yes, but the inhabitants won’t be Europeans anymore. 

If your country is suddenly populated by people from an entirely different background, who don’t speak your language, are the products of a completely different history and culture, have no common roots with you, express hate or contempt for you, are committed to an expansionist religion that believes in conversion, and have principles very different from yours on basic matters such as dress, food, drink, behavior, status of women. If they are determined and able to enforce your compliance with their principles, then you have not been joined by immigrants. You have been invaded by an occupying force. 

The Bosnians, at first strongly determined to return home, might have been uninterested in adapting and learning the language, but no. Even when they were still in makeshift housing in gymnasiums, they sent their children to the local schools and encouraged them to apply themselves and do well. I happened to be working as a sociologist in Vienna at the time, documenting the process. I well remember how, in those mass accommodations, family lockers were decorated with their children’s schoolwork, a gold star from the teacher, a source of great pride. 

The Syrians, Afghans, and Pakistanis, on the other hand, are congregating in specific neighborhoods and districts and converting these into versions of their places of origin. Still, this is not alarming; first-generation immigrants often cluster together in low-rent areas and recreate a partial atmosphere of “home.” And these can slot positively into local urban life. Turkish neighborhoods in Germany are popular with everyone for the fresh produce in their grocery stores and the authentic kebabs. The American people love to visit the Little Italys and Chinatowns. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of these minority neighborhoods become more prosperous and more upwardly mobile over time. 

Europe’s new migrant neighborhoods are a different matter entirely. From the banlieues of Paris, dangerous no-go zones where even the police fear to tread, to multiple city districts of Vienna, Stockholm, Frankfurt, and Oslo, these are zones of hostility, populated by gangs of young men hanging out on streetcorners with an attitude of being “on watch.” In some cities, they have taken to wearing vests that declare them to be the “Sharia Police.” Groups of women move about in full or moderate hijab, pushing fleets of baby carriages that often contain both an infant and a newborn, with multiple siblings of assorted sizes hanging on to the siderails. 

Austrians were recently astounded to learn that some refugee families were managing, purely by layering multiple specialized subsidies and with not a single wage earner among them, to achieve an income of 9,000 Euros per month. The average pension for Austrians retiring after a lifetime of working is 2,500 Euros. But the economic aspect is just part of this. If the indigenous population is failing to replace itself at an average of 1.2–1.8 children per family, while immigrants are reproducing at a rate of 3–6 children per family, and sometimes more, then the population shift is real within a few decades. And it won’t be the cheerful “multikulti” colorful paradise imagined by the liberals. It will be a grey and black hijab and a set of oppressive rules of behavior, and game over for women’s self-determination and equality. European women today are sad for the Afghan women under the Taliban? They should save their tears for their own daughters and granddaughters. 

Economic expectations were a dominant factor in Europeans’ decision to admit all these people, so let’s take a closer look at how that’s going. Ten years after Angela Merkel’s delighted welcome, fewer than 50 percent of Germany’s migrants are working. You may encounter some happier statistics, but if so, look closely. You will find they include the Ukrainians and non-EU Eastern Europeans, sometimes also the foreigners from other EU countries, and that they count part-time work and internships, ie, people who remain fully dependent on welfare, public housing, and other support but are “checking the box” by working a few hours a week, because their locality requires that for continued eligibility. 

In Austria, the unemployment rate for citizens is 5.7 percent. For the refugees, it’s over 31 percent. 62.2 percent of the country’s welfare recipients are migrants, the majority of whom, according to Minister of Integration Claudia Plakolm, are “young and capable of working.” She adds that “without some measures to oblige them to work, they never will.” France attempted such measures. Migrants were required to sign “integration contracts” committing to attend language classes, vocational training, and counseling, and to enter paid employment within 18 months, or lose their visa status. In 2024, the Fondation pour L’innovation Politique reviewed the results and found that over half the Afghan signatories remained cozily on 

In November 2025, the Austrian Teachers’ Union sent out a desperate SOS. They were, the head of their union stated, confronted with a “culture war in the classrooms.” Increasing numbers of their pupils were not just doing poorly in language acquisition; they were actively refusing to learn German on principle. Cooperative immigrant students were being threatened, harassed, and mobbed. Austrian children were falling behind in classrooms where some could not understand the lessons and, in the case of the boys, announced they would not listen to female teachers. Immigrant fathers were visiting the schools to demand that Islamic content be taught instead of the official curriculum.

The Problem of Second-Generation Immigrants

The second generation of this immigrant cohort will not experience upward mobility through its own decisions and behavior. Instead, it is proving highly receptive to terrorist recruitment. Nearly two-thirds of ISIS-linked arrests in Europe over the past year involved immigrant teenagers aged 13 to 19. Peter Neumann, professor of Security Studies at King’s College London, reviewed 27 recent ISIS-linked plots in which he identified 58 suspects, 38 of whom were teenagers. Recruitment is no longer done in radical mosques, which can be shut down, or by radical preachers, who can be arrested. 

Instead, it occurs online, through social media platforms, encrypted messaging apps, gaming environments, and dark web forums. Experts note with concern the large numbers of young people involved, the radically abbreviated timeline between first contact and involvement in attack planning (formerly a year or more, now as short as a few weeks), and the fact that immigrant girls and women are also joining. In Germany, nearly 900 such individuals are under active monitoring by the security agencies, the tip of an iceberg of unknown size. However, terrorism experts assume a ratio of ten-plus sympathizers per active ISIS supporter. As for monitoring, it’s constrained by so many rules that it’s just not effective—most of the recent deadly attacks have been committed by individuals who were already on the radar of the police.

The court system, too, has been overwhelmed by the migrants. Those whose asylum claims or visa applications are rejected have multiple options for repeated appeals, and just the “first appeal” alone occupies the courts for over 16 months with hearings, translators needing to be hired, foreign documents needing to be re-evaluated by court-appointed experts, and more. 

The legal system also confronts a new burden: many asylum seekers and accused criminal migrants claim to be much younger than appearances would strongly suggest. Their goal is to get themselves into the juvenile court system, which imposes shorter sentences or probation even for crimes of violence, and to qualify for the many additional welfare benefits for unaccompanied juveniles. Confronted with a large, hirsute, broad-shouldered male with a deep voice, administrative officials and the court may doubt his claim to be 14 years old, but if he arrived without documents or—a common practice—destroyed them upon arrival, his claim must be disproved. 

The pro-immigration leftist lobby has ensured that testing be exhaustive and include not only the previously sufficient physical exam by a doctor, but also a bone density test, an examination of dental records, and a CT scan of the clavicle—expensive and time-consuming. All of this is clogging the courts and withholding services from citizens who now must wait a year or more to resolve issues of great personal importance, such as child custody and visitation agreements or business construction permits. 

With all these problems piling up, European states largely remain in denial, still determined to believe that it’s just a matter of bumpy integration. Germany spends over a billion Euros annually on leisure and education, homework help, and community outreach programs to charm the migrants into becoming happy fellow campers. These programs are outsourced to NGO’s. In France, a confidential government document uncovered the political agendas and affiliations of some of these NGO’s. The document was leaked. 

Remember that the Europeans expected the migrants to support their economies? The substantive costs for migrant support in Germany alone run to 60 billion Euros a year. Instead of a group that pays the pensions, they have acquired a huge new group that plans to receive them permanently. Now imagine for a moment that Europe had instead spent all those resources on discovering ways to make its countries more family-friendly. Any young European can tell you where the problems lie: it’s too difficult to get space in a nursery or kindergarten. 

Too few companies offer on-site or nearby child care. There aren’t enough after-school programs. Yes, there is paid parental leave, but that will knock you right off the career ladder, especially if you do it more than once. Young couples are marrying later and delaying pregnancy; if that results in fertility issues, the specialized treatments are unaffordable for many. For 60 billion Euros, just one year of just one European country’s migrant budget, I am betting some creative solutions could have been developed for subsequent implementation. 

But we have not yet come to the second tactic in the undermining of European civilization: violent crime and sexual terrorism. 

German police data measure something called the TVBZ. This counts how many individuals out of 100,000 in Germany were implicated in a violent crime (such as armed robberies, knifings, assaults) in a particular year. In 2024, the number of German citizens was 163. In other words, out of every 100,000 native Germans, 163 were implicated in a violent crime. Now we come to the refugees and immigrants. For Ukrainians, the number was 443. For Turks, 538. Are you ready? For Iraqis, it was 1,606; for Afghans, 1,722; for Syrians, 1,740; and for Moroccans, 1,885. 

The worst damage to European cultural values and life is posed by one aspect of these violent crimes, the astronomical rise in sexual violence. Imagine that you have just arrived in a new country where your legal status is uncertain, where you are not yet able to provide for your own needs and livelihood, and where you are reliant on the goodwill of the local authorities and population. Do you now decide that what you are going to do is sexually attack the women of that country? 

No remotely reasonable, halfway sensible person would do this; the behavior is anomalous and requires an explanation. The liberals, of course, have lots of excuses for their unruly proteges, but these are unconvincing and embarrassing. Even someone from a very different culture, unaccustomed to the etiquette of Western courtship, knows that leaping upon women in metro cars and attempting to rip their clothes off is not the right thing to do. At the same time, they probably shouldn’t scream for help. There is only one plausible interpretation: this is a deliberate and systematic attack on the Western way of life. 

The attack has three tiers: sexual molestation, rape, and gang rape. And it has two tactical purposes. First, it serves as an object lesson to its own women—wear hijab, stay segregated, stay close to home, be submissive, and don’t even think about aspiring to the equality and emancipation of these European women, or we will treat you the way we treat them. Secondly, it fundamentally alters European public space and public life, with an especially severe impact on women. 

The first tier consists of verbal and physical molestation, and we’re not talking catcalls or awkward pickup lines. These are men, usually packs, ambushing women to insult them with profanities and to violate their physical integrity. Preferred locations are train stations, public transportation such as trams and metros, parks, and public swimming pools. In the latter, girls and young women are attacked, intimately touched, and have their swimsuits yanked off. In the summer of 2025, this reached such levels that some public pools imposed a ban on foreigners unless they could prove they were tourists. 

Public transportation is essential to most people’s daily lives in European cities, so targeting that space has been particularly effective and is having a direct impact on women’s freedom of movement and quality of life. In a recent German survey, more than half of female respondents reported feeling unsafe on public transport. A survey by the German police found that 2/3 of women were afraid to use public transport after dark and had begun avoiding evening travel. In other words, the migrants have already succeeded in imposing a de facto curfew and psychological hijab on their host country’s female citizens. 

The German Minister of Health, Nina Warken, laments that “German women now experience significant sectors of the public space as no-go zones” and explained that this is “due to the presence of migrant men, who harass and physically attack them, and who come from cultures where the status of women is very different from Europe. Violent crime is rising in Germany and the majority of suspects are foreigners.” Women, she said, were complaining to her that they now feel unsafe in public and avoid certain routes, places, and traveling by train in general, and carry pepper spray.

In France, 3,374 victims of actual sexual violence on public transport were officially recorded in 2024, a 6 percent rise from the previous year and an 86 percent increase since 2016 (2014-16 having been the years of greatest refugee inflow). Nearly 70 percent of women in the Paris region reported having experienced sexual violence on public transport at least once—the same in the UK, where authorities recorded over 11,000 such incidents in one year.

The first shot fired in this battle was Cologne 2016. Heading to the traditional New Year’s Eve event in front of the Cathedral—the equivalent of the dropping of the ball at Times Square—women were ambushed by gangs of refugee and migrant men who assaulted them, seized hold of them, pulled off their clothes, and passed them around to be intimately groped, while also robbing them. The police force later estimated that over 1,000 men had participated in this one-sided battle and identified them as primarily North African and Arab asylum seekers. What sort of men, living in someone else’s country on sufferance, two years or less after arriving, get together to prepare a mass sex assault? The sort that have declared war on another society. 

The police, vastly outnumbered and seemingly paralyzed by this unexpected and unprecedented happening, completely failed to restore order or defend the women. The next morning, hoping to make it all just go away, the city issued a statement describing the New Year’s event as having been “largely peaceful.” But the press quickly got wind of the hundreds of reports women had filed with the police, and the story broke. The attack had been planned and coordinated online and via social media; the ring leaders of this attack could have been identified with the slightest forensic effort, their communications tracked, and a significant number of the men involved held to account; this did not happen. I invite you to imagine that, in Saudi Arabia, 1,000 foreign workers decide to launch such an attack on the country’s women. You wouldn’t want to be one of those men. And it would not happen more than once.

But in Germany, the authorities chose to make excuses (they were drunk; they aren’t used to interacting with women; they will become more civilized over time). Giving this kind of aggression a pass was read by the migrants as permission to go ahead, and behavior of this type has since become endemic, with devastating effects on European women. In a report by the research organization PLAN, published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine in 2020, girls and women from age 14 upward in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and elsewhere listed catalogues of their personal experiences being threatened, followed, insulted, and groped in public places. In a German police study, women said they had begun to reduce their presence in public spaces, either altogether or after dark. 

The police study concluded with “helpful tips” such as “try to find a seat near the driver” and “if you are attacked, don’t hesitate to call on your fellow passengers for help.” That advice is pathetic, disgraceful, and verges on dereliction of duty. In August 2025, in Dresden, this exact situation occurred, and a courageous 21-year-old American tourist indeed came to the aid of two women who were being assaulted by men later found to be Syrian migrants. The armed attackers turned on him and stabbed him; he survived with serious injuries. These are military operations—these are militias seizing control of public space and dominating the “enemy” civilians through a cowardly, asymmetric attack on those least able to fight back.

Next level up: rape. In Sweden, nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of those convicted of rape have a migrant background, ie, they are first or second-generation immigrants. In France, data for Paris in 2023 showed that 77 percent of convicted perpetrators of rape were migrants. In Italy, according to 2022 ISTAT data, migrants accounted for a disproportionate 42.2 percent of those reported or arrested on charges of sexual violence, while representing just 8.9 percent of the population.

Next escalation: gang rape. This crime was practically unknown in Europe before the barbarians arrived. In Germany, migrants comprise around 10 percent to 12 percent of the population, but they are associated with 50 percent to 55 percent of all gang rape cases, according to data from the Bundeskriminalamt. In Austria, a gang of 17 men recently stood accused of repeatedly raping a 12-year-old girl. They filmed it on video, which was played in court, and on which you could hear her pleading with them to stop. Political commentator Gerald Grosz termed this conduct a “message of aggression addressed to all of us.” But the liberals and the Left remain determined to self-immolate their civilization on the pyre of blind tolerance.

Europeans are proving unable to expel to any effective degree even convicted criminals, even persons whose asylum claims have been reviewed and rejected, appealed, and dismissed. Soon, their attackers will hold citizenship and be fully, irretrievably within the gates. Some countries, such as Norway, can legally expel persons who hold dual citizenship, a law that should be seriously considered by others.

In general, the efforts are on par with someone trying to stop a tank with a wet Kleenex. Four members of the European Parliament introduced a “Resolution on Mass Immigration Undermining European Women’s Safety.” A nice action, but it contains no specific demands and merely calls for an “action plan.”