So Irshad Manji, Canada's foremost Muslim-lesbian-feminist, has written an editorial for the LA Times on last week's Schwartzenneger border controversy. Pitching the piece to Michael Kinsley, she must have said something like this: "Look, Michael, Americans are suspicious of Europeans, especially after the Iraq War, so if we suggest that Schwartzenneger (an Austrian!) is following the European lead in calling for tighter borders, we can throw his proposals into populist disrepute."

So what's Manji got against Schwartzenneger? And what does it have to do with Europe?

Not much. Manji's editorial is an example of ethnic special-pleading with a libertarian twist. She complains that recent European debates over Muslim integration haven't taken sufficient account of the new "social contract" between dying European populations and vibrant Muslim newcomers. What's the new social contract? Recent immigrants pay into natives' pension and healthcare funds. In exchange, the natives surrender any claim to cultural authority -- i.e., any right to complain about failed integration.

The point of the editorial is to suggest that the same holds true for the Mexican presence in the US. There's a parallel being drawn here, even if it's never made explicit: America's Mexicans, like Europe's Muslims, are funding the lavishness and reproductive irresponsibility of an aging population. We'll pay for you, say Manji's immigrants, but only on our terms...

And then it will be our country.

Dutch blogger Jasper Emmering supplies an apt (if intemperate) exegesis of the Manji foolishness here. Emmering takes particular exception to Manji's suggestion of a certain equivalence between Muslim extremists in the Netherlands and Dutch secularists horrified by the murder of Theo van Gogh:

We fear Muslim lunatics who bomb train stations and assassinate critics, who kill their own sisters rather than have those sisters marry with one of us. We fear Moroccan boys because they have the highes crime rate of all juveniles. Because they have re-introduced gay-bashing to Amsterdam. Now, I happen to think that in time, these problems will probably go away. But that does not mean it's racist to wish these problems never had come up. Large scale immigration is something you cannot easily undo.

And yes, Holland is small and crowded. With over 1000 people per square mile of land, it's more than five times as crowded as California. Different circumstances, different solutions?

I will simply add that, though there is an analogy to be drawn between the American and European cases, it's not the one Manji identifies. It is this: in the case of both America and Europe, immigrant contributions to the social state do little or nothing to cover the costs associated with a rapidly aging population.

And that leaves you wondering exactly what we're getting out of the "new social contract" proposed by Manji -- cheap labour and Social Security inputs in exchange for an unconditional surrender of cultural authority. The benefits simply aren't there. In the meantime, as Emmering puts it, "Large scale immigration is something you cannot easily undo."

Update: For some idea of how bad things have gotten in the Netherlands, readers should have a look at the now defunct but still instructive blog, Dutch Report.