Dhimmitude Or Diaspora?

Something's been bothering me since reading Christopher Caldwell's piece on the Netherlands in the wake of Theo van Gogh's murder. It's this bit:

The question naturally arises: If immigrants behave this way now, what will happen when they are far more numerous, as all authorities have long promised they will be? It has been estimated that the country's two largest cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, will be "majority minority" very soon (Rotterdam is today at 47 percent), and already 65 percent of primary and secondary students in both cities are of non-Dutch parentage. London's Daily Telegraph, citing immigration experts and government statistics, reported a net outflow of 13,000 people from Holland in the first six months of 2004, the first such deficit in half a century. One must treat this statistic carefully--it could be an artifact of an aging population in which many are retiring to warmer places. But it could also be the beginning of something resembling the American suburban phenomenon of "white flight," occurring at the level of an entire country.

What if a considerable fraction--even a large minority--of that 13,000 really are fleeing from Islamic radicalism? What happens 20 or 30 years from now, when demographic trends could well result in "minority-majority" (or even outright majority) status for the Islamic cohort in western Europe? If they're faced with the options of dhimmitude or flight, where will the native Europeans flee to?

Why, here, of course.

Lots will go to Canada, I would guess particularly the Scandinavians, and plenty more will go to Australia. But the majority will be drawn right here to the USA. After all, we've got more room, more money, more opportunities--and most importantly, we're the most able to protect our own. Not unlike their ancestors' cousins of past centuries, the majority of those who give up on Europe will come here.

And then what? What will we do with them? More interestingly, what will they do to us? Will the 'blue states' fill up with UNphilic Euro-refugees and get bluer? Or will the refugees, haven been driven from their homes by radical Islam, lean more towards the 'red' Scots-Irish motto of nemo me impune lacessit?

I don't have any idea. You don't, either. It's silly to even project current political trends in this country 20 years from now. In 1985, the South was still a province of the Democratic Party at virtually every level below the Presidency, and California was reliably Republican. Nobody really knows what the political maps will look like in 2025, much less how those maps might be impacted by a new wave of European immigrants.

But somebody ought to start thinking about it, both here, and across the pond. Just in case Holland is the canary in Europe's coal mine.