Mamoudou Gassama, the Spider-Man of Paris who saved a 4-year-old boy by climbing to a fourth-floor balcony, is pretty much the worst kind of immigrant as far as European populists — and, indeed, European governments — are concerned.
He is a 22-year-old Muslim male from the southwest of Mali. A civil conflict smolders in the country's north, but that wouldn't qualify him for refugee status. He's rural, uneducated and unqualified. He arrived in France illegally and he has spent months there as an undetected economic migrant of the kind construction bosses like.
Gassama is just the kind of person France and other European Union countries want to discourage from coming; he has done the kind of work the government would like to exterminate. Yet, thanks to his feat and a viral video of it, he has now met President Emmanuel Macron, received a medal, residence papers, the promise of French citizenship and a firefighter job offer.