Emmanuel Macron Is Playing a Dangerous Game.

[DFW]

2. That sounds like an article written by an American

It overlooks the western European view that taxes and immigration are closely intertwined. Even my wife, a very left-leaning German social worker, blew up at German taxpayer money being siphoned off to finance, in part, Eastern European and third world immigrants‘ successful efforts at gaming the welfare system. If clever enough, some of them found loopholes in the rules allowing them to live in big apartments, refusing to work, and getting crowded second apartments for their wives and kids, cell phones and cars all paid by German taxpayers‘ money. Such cases were, obviously, few and far between, but common enough to make big headlines, and fuel anti-foreigner sentiment. My office in France says it‘s no different there. As long as welfare cheating is seen as far less worthy of prosecution than tax cheating, the right wing will have an ever-renewable supply of xenophobic sentiment to exploit.