Roma

It’s not a big surprise to read in the press that France is under fire for deporting groups of Roma or “gypsies”, as they’re often referred to.

After all, the French don’t have an enviable reputation when it comes to tolerance of others. I was once on a bus tour of France, and the tour guide, an American, said “you may have heard that the French don’t like Americans.” A Canadian in the group raised his hand and said “That’s not quite true. They don’t like anyone”.

Of course, that’s a generalization, and subjective, but it’s also not entirely wrong.

Which brings me to my point. The Roma are being deported from France to Romania and Bulgaria, even though they are citizens of the European Union which includes Romania and Bulgaria. And the French are being vilified for it. But is it really as cut-and-dried an offense as the media, other than the French press, is making it?

In Italy, I saw a Roma camp, set up in a public park. There was no fresh water other than a stream, no significant toilet facilities, no bathing facilities other than, presumably, that stream and no camping permitted. But the group had set up a camp and squatted there. For how long, I don’t know. And a large area of that PUBLIC park was now no usable by the public. How would you feel about a gypsy camp in the parkland next to your home or your children’s playground? I understand that traveling and camping are part of their culture. But squatting is not an acceptable part of our culture.

It’s not a homelessness issue. I’m generally sympathetic to the homeless here in North America. Most are victims of a bad economy, or the demons of mental illness. We’d all like to see our homeless given the help they need to live in their own homes.

But the Roma are not homeless because of poverty or mental illness. Their wandering and squatting are a way of life for them. A way of life that should have ended long ago, in my opinion.

France isn’t saying the Roma can’t continue to live and work in France as EU citizens. It’s saying that they can’t live as squatters on someone else’s property. That’s not unreasonable.

So, the French are faced with the choice of arresting and detaining Roma for illegal squatting, OR deporting them, OR permitting them to keep squatting on public or private land. Politically, and practically those are three equally unpopular options.

Nobody really wants itinerant strangers camped out in their community. Some North American communities offer homeless people a meal, some money, and a bus ticket back to their hometown, believing it makes their own neighborhood safer. We can’t really blame the French for wanting to keep their streets and parks clean and safe. What they’re doing doesn’t LOOK good. But if a Roma camp was set up in your area, can you say you’d feel differently?