TWR - //Andy, do you honestly believe Integration IS working? I understand this is a minefield to discuss on here. //
It depends what you mean by 'integration'.
I live in a city with a large immigrant population from Europe, Asia and Africa. There is no evidence whatsoever of the tide of Muslims sweeping across the world laying waste to the infidel - quite the opposite, everyone seems to get along just fine.
My view is that we have the media that America has - it is fuelled and motivated by fear.
It takes the extremely large profile of a correspondingly relatively minute number of Muslim extremists, and parlays this into the notion that Islam wishes to take over the world. This ball is picked up and run with by people who search The Koran for passages to back up this nonsense, and they then bleat that Islam hates everyone who is not Islam and will work to destroy them.
The numbers prove that this is arrant nonsense. Al Qauida has been in existence since 1988 - if they are so keen on taking over the world, what's keeping them?
Human nature dictates that there are always some people who want to believe they, and only they, have a handle on the doom and gloom facing everyone.
You find it in the survivalists in the U.S. who stockpile food and weapons waiting for the black population to overwhelm them. You find it in doom mongers here who darkly predict the takeover of the UK by Muslim interlopers, and so on.
But in reality? None of this is actually happening! If Islam wanted to take over the West, it would have happened by now! The terrorists confirm their hatred of the West, and commit atrocities to publicise their view, but in proportion, how many are there, compared to Muslims who simply live their lives and get on with everyone.
My view is that integration, while it is never ever going to be an absorption of one culture by another - and that applies both ways incidentally - is largely continuing as it always has, and always will. The only thing that has changed is the obsessive need for a rampant and fear-crazed media to sew seeds of fear in the minds of its consumers.
Bird flu? Death of bees? Muslim takeover? All scare stories, all meaningless.