French riots now inside Paris, no end in sight

Now rioters are in Paris.

Here's an analysis from the Daily Telegraph's Niall Ferguson. France is in for a rough ride.

The problem is not immigration per se but a failure of integration. France has the highest foreign-born population of any European country - more than 10 per cent. Yet this is a legacy of past immigration, not present. The French have a relatively low immigration rate and are notably unsympathetic to those who seek political asylum.

These days, most newcomers are joining family members who have been in France for years if not decades. The trouble is, they are moving to residential ghettoes with miserable economic prospects. The unemployment rate among foreign-born residents is more than twice the national average, which is already high enough at 9 per cent. Immigrants are also heavily over-represented in French jails.

Revealingly, the rioters who have so far been arrested are nearly all the sons and grandsons of immigrants. Their life stories are sorry chronicles of educational under-achievement, unemployment and petty crime.

Ferguson, in the same article, says a lot of great things about the United States.