Anthony L. Hall is a descendant of the Turks & Caicos Islands, international lawyer and political consultant - headquartered in Washington DC - who publishes his own Internet Weblog at www.theipinionsjournal.com offering commentaries on current events from a Caribbean perspective

This week, ironically, the world watched in stupefaction and indignation as privileged and pampered French students took to the streets to protest against the enactment of a new jobs law that the French government hopes will redress some of the frustrations that provoked Muslim youths to riot last November. Reportedly, these mostly Eurocentric students feel no social obligation to give up their guarantees of jobs for life, which is an integral provision in France’s cradle-to-grave welfare system, just to help the government assimilate marginalised and disaffected Muslim youths. Therefore, if ever a government were faced with a very consequential Hobson’s choice, it’s the French government of ambivalent President Jacques Chirac and his resolute Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.

However, the issues that have the French government reeling to and fro between pressures generated by Muslim disaffection with its policies and pressures generated by student dissatisfaction with attempts to revise those policies are the very issues that loom with equally untenable consequences for governments all around the world. But they portend far greater troubles for countries in the Caribbean where governments do not have the financial or law enforcement resources to accommodate the aspirations or quell the frustrations of illegal migrants and marginalised immigrants who constitute a critical mass of their national population.

For example, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine Haitians in the Bahamas (or Guyanese in Barbados) erupting in similar riots because they are fed up with chronic unemployment, institutionalised discrimination and social alienation. Indeed, just as young Muslims in France fought against the discrimination their parents tolerated, Haitians might also fight against the caste-like presumption that they too will supply the cheap labour for Bahamians that their parents provided without complaint. On the other hand, just as privileged and pampered French students took to the streets to protest against cuts in their welfare benefits, Bahamians might mount similar protests if their government enacts laws to assimilate Haitians at their (perceived) expense.

Nonetheless, the Muslim riots and student strikes should serve notice on governments all over the world - especially those in the Caribbean – of the combustible consequences of marginalising migrant and immigrant populations to ghettos where crime and every order of vice pervade. Therefore, it behooves our national leaders to balance comprehensive immigration controls with education, jobs and social programmes that are aimed at assimilating Haitians, Guyanese and other Caribbean immigrants who are living lives of quiet desperation (and simmering frustration) in our midst. Because the French are now experiencing the dire consequences of failing to even acknowledge, let alone deal with, the problem of metastasizing angst and understandable frustrations within its immigrant population.