These kids make me wanna puke

But unless the kids of today cling to some sense of loyalty for their homelands they will forever remain the corrupt, impoverished lands that you describe.

I'm sorry but you have a very flawed way of looking at reality. It's not easy for people to blindly accept being "French" when French society puts only superficial efforts into accepting these people as true equals and citizens. In fact, France has been immensely more successful with integration and assimilation of immigrant populations than many countries because of their emphasis on unity through language and the idea that overseas French are just as French as mainland French.

They are children also, most of them first or second generation, living in an incredibly urban and largely globalized setting. Why do they have to see themselves as French anyways? Ask MANY people in America if they identify themselves as American, and they will say no, because 'American' has a connotation of nativity and generally whiteness too, I imagine it is similar for French. From the brief exchanges we here, most of these students seem to accept that they are "Frenchmen", that they reside in France and speak French, but are not "French", because they are still connected in part to the cultures of their (or their parents) places of birth. I would hardly say these kids profess hatred for all that is French - they often refer to music genres and artists and other things that are French that they like. And most of them come from places (i.e. the Caribbean, the Maghreb, West Africa, etc) with French colonial connections.

The fact is, that France has always been different then the rest of the industrialized world in the way that it views "foreigners", and this is largely due to colonial and post-colonial times that attempted to assimilate people linguistically and culturally but realistically, had to deal with the fact that these people were not going to simply give up their cultures completely for France (though many have to several degrees).

Your complaint really bothers me, and I think it's unfair and biased. You try moving to Morocco or Mali or wherever, and trying to fit in and "become" Moroccan or Malian or whatever, you'll find that it's not that easy regardless of your own efforts, because it takes time and influence for you to become integrated and for the population to accept you as integrated. You act like France is offering these kids the world on a platter, and sure, industrialized countries offer immigrants many opportunities they may lack in their "corrupt, impoverished, war-torn land of their parents" (which by the way is a disgusting and completely biased way to refer to someone's homeland, completely ignoring the fact that there are pull factors from France in addition to the push factors in these countries that led to immigration), but these kids are living in a reality where they are poor compared to white French, where they are under real pressure to find a place between the French culture they are surrounded by and their home cultures which they are also surrounded by (their families, their homes, etc). Who are you to say their loyality is "misplaced" or that they are ignorant? I think you sound ignorant and I think many of those people would say the same thing about you for expressing such a biased attitude. These kids' identities are far more complicated than you make them out to be.