As the song says, it’s raining men. But it is no cause for hallelujahs. Far from it — the influx of young, male migrants from the Middle East and North Africa risks tipping the whole balance of European society. A disproportionate majority of the immigrants from Syria, Iraq and Libya are unmarried young men, many of them under 18, travelling without family members. Restless and rootless, those lone boys are part of a very alarming trend. Studies consistently show that communities with a predominance of single males are more prone to aggression and, in particular, sexual violence.
We had a grim warning of what this means on New Year’s Eve, when gangs of hundreds of young men of North African or Middle Eastern appearance, many of them apparently drunk and speaking Arabic, crowded around female revellers in Cologne and Hamburg, and robbed them while committing vile sexual assaults. The victims spoke of being surrounded by 20 or 30 men at a time who pressed against them so hard they were unable to move or fight back, let alone escape. While some men groped the women, others snatched bags, phones and purses. The assaults were terrifying and degrading, and many of the women felt too defiled even to be able to report the robberies for several days. When they did, the police initially did not appear to take them seriously. It is a shocking development, but one that does not altogether surprise me. Male-dominated migration is a problem we need to be talking about.
Many readers might assume that in warzones such as Syria and Iraq, it is women and children who are most at risk. But it’s the boys, from the age of about eight and up, who are most likely to be turned by Islamic State into ‘cub’ fighters — or killed. That’s why they are so vulnerable, and so intent on reaching safety out of the country.
In Europe last year, more than a million migrants swept in — up to 400 per cent more than arrived the previous year. Nearly all came across the Mediterranean from Africa or the Aegean coast, and according to figures released by the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, half were Syrians, fleeing the war. Another 20 per cent were Afghans, and 7 per cent Iraqis. The majority were brought in by people-smugglers, whose highly organised operations were worth an estimated $1 billion (£680 million) last year alone.
This problem is familiar from nightly news coverage. But what the reports have failed to address is the damage that can be done to societies that prize sexual equality, and a peaceful, stable way of life, when so many migrants are young men. According to Unicef, more than one in five of the migrants is under 18. Of those youngsters on their own, about 90 per cent will be male. In Sweden, which welcomed nearly 28,000 migrants in the first nine months of last year, 71 per cent of all applicants for asylum were male. On any given day in 2015, about 90 unaccompanied males younger than 18 came in, compared with just eight unaccompanied females. As a result, among 16- and 17-year-olds across Sweden as a whole, the male-to-female ratio is far more skewed even than in China at the height of its one-child policy, only recently relaxed.
As a fascinating article by Valerie Hudson on the Politico website reveals, 18,615 males aged 16 and 17 entered Sweden in the past year, compared with just 2,555 females of the same age. Added to the existing population of the same age, it means there are now 121,914 males in Sweden aged 16 or 17, compared with 99,079 girls — a 123:100 male-to-female ratio. In China, the male to female ratio in the same age group is approximately 117:100. Hudson argues that it will not take long for Sweden’s broader young adult population to be similarly skewed, assuming the trend in migrant arrivals continues as expected beyond this year. And it is not just Sweden. By September last year in Greece, the UNHCR believes, some 730,000 migrants had arrived on flotillas of boats, of whom more than a quarter were under 18. Again, the great majority were male.
People have not wanted to talk about this, but we have here a recipe for disaster. When more and more unaccompanied teenage males upset the sex ratio balance, insurmountable problems are created. As a former Chief Prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, I have been warning for a long time that people bring cultural baggage with them from their old lives into their new environment.
