The economic argument for immigration into Europe is not rationally based on facts but ideologically subservient to cultural Marxism.
The academic establishment and the mainstream media like to parade themselves as paragons of reason and factually based policies in their insistence that immigration is economically beneficial at a time of low fertility rates, a shrinking labour force, and a huge aging population in need to health care and pensions. This is an “economic” argument for mass immigration into Europe which does not appear to rely on suppositions about the cultural benefits of diversity and which is promoted in pro-capitalistic terms by the mainstream Right, and in pro-welfare terms by the mainstream Left.
We should not be surprised by this convergence of the Right and Left on the benefits of mass immigration, since capitalism has long come with government management. Just as capitalist growth presupposes state intervention, government spending presupposes capitalist expansion. The difference between Right and Left over economic issues relates only to the organizational and institutional forms they prefer in the management of capitalism. Despite the neoliberal “roll back” of the state, which occurred during the 1980s and 1990s, when Keynesianism was discredited and government expenditures were cut and some industries deregulated, capitalism has long operated, and continues to operate, in the context of socialistic intervention and regulation.
The essence of this Right/Left economic argument is that the population of Europe is set to decline dramatically in the next decades due to continuing below-replacement fertility rates, which is resulting in a shrinking labour force, at the same time as there is a growing aging baby boom generation. This will bring, it is said, a “massive” crisis which, left to its own, without mass immigration, will result in widespread labour shortages, lower tax receipts, declining welfare supports and consumption levels.
The argument I will make here is that neither capitalistic socialism nor socialistic capitalism, in and of themselves, require mass immigration, even in the face of low fertility rates and demographic decline. There is nothing in the basic principles of economics, a discipline created by European males, which requires mass immigration by Africans, Asians, and Mestizos. The economic evidence shows, to the contrary, that mass immigration has been detrimental to Europe. The Right/Left “economic” argument is driven by deeper motivations which can only be understood in terms of the ideological imperatives of cultural Marxism.
Cultural Marxism has an economic interest in bringing about a type of globalization in which European ethnic identities, national economic cohesion, the priority of the welfare of one’s nationals, no longer counts in the assessment of economic costs and benefits. They want borderless globalization, the movement of labour and capital without impediments, control by corporations and elites having no loyalty to any nation. This form of economic globalization will benefit migrants as well as certain sectors of the European national economies, but it is a lie when this sectarian benefits are portrayed as if they were benefits to the peoples of Europe as such, as if immigration actually improves the economic well being of Europeans.
The Economic Argument
The starting point of the economic mass immigration argument is that Europe as a whole is facing a “population disaster” due to falling fertility, a rate of 1.52 children per couple, which has resulted in a shrinking labour force. At the same time, Europe is facing an aging population with a life expectancy that has risen considerably even in the last few years. For example, we are informed that between 2000 and 2009 life expectancy rose from 74.5 to 76.4 years for males, and from 80.9 to 82.4 years for females; and that it is expected to increase to 83 years for males and 88 for females by 2050.
Accordingly, economists tell us that the “dependency ratio” — which measures the percentage of retired people aged 65+ relative to the percentage of the working population of 15 to 64 years — is expected to rise for all 27 EU countries from 25.9% in 2010 to 50.4% in 2050. In Italy, the old age dependency ratio is expected to rise to almost 60%, and in Germany to 56.4%.
The argument, then, is not only that total population is set to decline, but that Europe is experiencing a changing demographic profile leading to an unsustainable old age dependency ratio as well as a shortage in the labour skills necessary for growth. A smaller labour force will mean lower tax receipts, declining productive capacity, labour shortages in some key industries, which will exert an upward pressure on wages, making European businesses less competitive in the world.
It is observed that various measures have been taken, and can be further amplified, to encourage women to have more children, but the results have been minimal, with fertility rates increasing mainly among immigrant populations rather than the native population. The retirement age can be increased to 67 years, but there is no guarantee that a political party will risk offending the largest growing bloc of voters. As it is, this would be a bandage solution to what is now an irreversible demographic decline given the decades-long below replacement fertility rates. It is estimated that the population of Europe, under current fertility rates, will decline by 125 million by 2050. Even if the fertility rates were to increase in the next ten or fifteen years, this decline, and the concurrent economic trends outlined above, are already set in stone for the coming decades. Something has to be done now.
The Right/Left establishment has thus concluded that the only substantive solution is a “sustained influx of young immigrant workers.” This argument estimates that 100 million immigrants will have to be brought into Europe by 2050 in order to avoid a “population disaster.” This number is not large, or so they tell us, since it is lower than the expected demographic decline of 125 million if current trends continue. The immigration numbers Europe has already experienced in the last two decades is not enough if economic disaster is to be averted. A research institute has calculated, for example, that German companies “will be short of 1.8 million skilled workers by 2020, and 3.9 million by 2040” unless Germany “welcomes an average of 533,000 immigrants every year up until 2060”.
In Portugal, in Spain, in Italy, everywhere, the populations are shrinking. “Portugal’s population could drop from 10.5 million to 6.3 million by 2060.” In Italy, the proportion of over 65s is set to rise from 2.7% (2014) to 18.8% in 2050. As The Guardian informs us:
Europe desperately needs more young people to run its health services, populate its rural areas and look after its elderly because, increasingly, its societies, are no longer self-sustaining.
Or, as Doug Saunders, Canada’s international-affairs columnist, puts it:
Europe’s economies need their African workers more than ever: Germany alone expects to lose seven million working-age people to demographic change.
There will be “challenges” bringing 100 million, to be sure: “Europe remains an exclusive society.” There is “anti-immigrant sentiment” and “rising xenophobia.” “Far right parties are making inroads.” But it can be done through a concerted effort to “educate” the population, “counter xenophobic opinions and attitudes,” and teach Europeans that “irregular migrants” “must not be treated like criminals” but as individuals representing the highest ideals of freedom and democracy. Teach, too, that African migrants, in the words of Saunders, are “well-educated and articulate…ambitious, urban.”
Of course, immigrants have responsibilities, they should learn the language of the host nations, and accept the core “Western” values of multiculturalism and mass immigration. But it is for the Whites to fight off their xenophobia and change their “education systems” so as to “accommodate large numbers of foreign students.” “Immigration programmes should be pervasive, permeating various aspects of life, from education to health and social security.” Only thus will Europeans learn to create “self-sustaining” societies.
Sweden is lauded by these advocates as the one nation that is “weathering the demographic storm” with its high acceptance of asylum seekers and economic migrants. Proud of Sweden’s exemplar behaviour, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, at a meeting in 2014, urged other European countries to follow his country’s path:
I am not going to sweep under the carpet the fact that it’s a major challenge at the moment [to accept high levels of asylum applications]. But it is also an asset. We must recognize that if we do not do this now, we are going to have a gigantic problem in a few years.
Peter Sutherland, United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary- General for International Migration, has told Europeans at large:
The evidence is clear: migration contributes more powerfully to development than any other means we know…Migrants perform the most fundamental tasks, from building roads and homes, to taking care of the very young and the very old. We also know migrants spark innovation.
Total Failure in Sweden…
Both the Swedish Prime minister and Peter Sutherland are deceiving the public. The reality is amply clear already that immigration to Europe has been an economic and cultural disaster combined. Sutherland is making an argument for a form of economic globalization that is dominated by cultural Marxist precepts and that is not necessarily inherent to the process of globalization and economic progress.
Take a look at what has transpired in Sweden. The Right/Left propaganda is that Sweden has been “expanding” since 2010 with “high private consumption and investment underpinning economic growth,” as well as claims that GDP expanded by 3.6 percent in 2015 and that “employment is rising and unemployment is falling.” But when we look beyond these isolated facts, the evidence is otherwise. Keep in mind that Swedes are not allowed to investigate this disaster, so we have to rely on the observations of an established immigrant in Sweden no less, the Kurdish economist Tino Sanandaji:
- 48 percent of immigrants of working age don’t work.
- Immigrants have not integrated; even after 15 years of residence 40 percent remain out of work.
- 58 percent of welfare payments are grabbed by immigrants.
- 48 percent of children with low test scores are immigrants.
- Immigrants are not filling the skills-jobs economists claimed they would, which is why on average they earn 40 percent less than Swedes.
- Government spends about 4 billion a year settling new refugees.
The following comes from “The Sweden Report” by “an American living in Sweden” (and other linked sources):
- In 1990, Sweden had three “exclusion areas” (ghettoes inhabited primarily by non-Swedes); by 2004, it had 136, and 186 by 2006.
- The native Swedish population is being replaced by Muslims and Africans. Thus: the immigrant population in Sweden has been increasing steadily from 14.5% in 2000, to 19.1% in 2010 to 21.5% in 2014.
- Swedes are now the minority in Malmö, the third largest city; and what is more is that the percentage of the foreign population in the younger age range, 0 to 44 years, has been steadily rising, from 47.0% in 2002 to 57.5% in 2013.
- Gang rule, rampant vandalism has been increasing steadily. Car fires incidents were estimated at 219 in 1996, 964 in 2006, and 1,372 in 2013.
- In 2012, 70% of teachers reported witnessing some form of school arson.
Other sources:
- Sweden, the most feminist country in the world, now has the second highest number of rapes in the world, after Lesotho in southern Africa, six times higher than the United States.
- According to an independent study of government data, Sweden’s 16.5% foreign born population uses 66.4% of the nation’s government financial assistance. In 2014, the cost of housing the 83.5% Swedish-born-immigrant population was around 4,44 billion kroners, while the foreign born population of 16.5% cost almost 8,88 billion kroners (not counting other expenses such as family allowances and old-age dependency support).
- In order to finance these costs, and the mass influx of refugees in 2104-15, and the future, it has been reported (by “an American living in Sweden”) that “Sweden is taxing itself into oblivion”.
…And in Germany
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| Protest sign in Vockerode, Germany: “No! Mrs. Merkel. We can’t make it. 1.300 inhabitants, 650 asylum seekers” |
The same pattern can be found in every country in Europe in which large numbers of immigrants have been imported. Germany could have learned from the Swedish case, but instead it brought in over a million migrants in 2015, with economists celebrating this as a “great step” in solving Germany’s labour scarcity. However, the costs so far, for the shelter, welfare and integration of these migrants has been €22 billion this year and an expected €27.6 billion next year.
Professor for Finance Bernd Raffelhüschen, has calculated a fiscal burden of 17 billion Euro per year provided that the refugees integrate quickly into the labour market. Assuming that the migrants are integrated into the labour market within six years, an unrealistically positive scenario by Raffelhüschen’s own admission, he has estimated that the total costs of the refugees will amount to a staggering 900 billion Euro.
The Problem Is Not Capitalist Globalization
Yet, this “economic” argument has not encountered one single criticism from the establishment. Economic thinking about immigration in the West is controlled by the ideology of diversity, and so globalization has been misinterpreted as a process that necessitates immigration, even though globalization in Asian countries has come without immigration despite below replacement fertility rates. The difference is that Asian countries are not ruled by a hostile ruling class.
Modernity, capitalism, socialism are compatible with globalization and zero immigration. Claiming that we need to reject modernity and restore traditionalism is misguided. Obviously, some businesses stand to gain from cheaper labour, more consumers, and the multiplier effects of welfare spending. A proportion of the immigrants do find lower paying jobs in agriculture, services and other informal sectors, and a percentage of the “growth in employment” can be accounted for by the hiring of immigrants. But these are economic benefits to migrants and businesses uninterested in the overall well being of Europeans.
It can be argued generally that growing economies need growing populations, increasing supplies of both workers and consumers, and that the growth of Western economies in the last two centuries has been associated with population growth. Yet, it is also the case that population growth has been a negative factor in instances in which it has outpaced productivity increases, and that economies with very high populations, despite strong economic growth, tend to have lower GDP per capita than countries with similar growth rates but low population densities. The precise nature of the relationship between population growth and economic well being is not unidirectional but varies from country to country. And it cannot be denied that a key factor in this variation has been the quality of the labour force.
Right from the start, the economic argument of the Right/Left coalition should be seen as suspect in the way it speaks about foreign labour as if it were merely a matter of attracting immigrant workers to solve labour shortages on the assumption that a) immigrant labour is equal in quality, or equally suitable to the skill-needs of European economies, and b) the resident labour supply is insufficient to meet labour demand as if there was no unemployment in the host nation.
For over a decade now it has been apparent that there is a horrendous mismatch between the quality of immigrant labour and the needs of the European economy. The vast majority of Muslim and African immigrants have the wrong education. Too few engineers, scientists, and skilled labourers have come or have been able to be educated in the host nation. This is why there is an employment gap in Europe between natives and non-natives.
To this day, Turks in Germany, even after 50 years and three generations, remain poorly educated, some 30 percent don’t have a school leaving certificate, and only 14 percent do a degree from Germany’s top-level high schools, half the average of the German population. Only 20 percent of Turks have a regular job; the other 80% live on state social benefits. The Bertelsmann Foundation calculated that immigrants in Germany generally, before the massive migrant invasion of 2014 and 2015, were costing the government up to $20 billion per year.
Given this reality of unused immigrant labour, how could economists in Germany argue about labour shortages? Something other than economics is motivating them. Unemployment rates in Europe have been quite high for some time; Spain’s unemployment rates have stood above 20 percent since 2008. Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and other countries have masses of unused labour supplies. There is no way around the fact that this unused resident labour supply would be sufficient to solve the present and future labour shortages. It is also the case that, in economic terms alone, the percentage of unused labour is a function of whether the country educates its own young population to acquire the skills demanded by the economy.
Therefore, the notion that the needs of Europe’s far more advanced economies can be met by the poorest, least educated populations in the world is clearly an idea that could only have come from economists totally subservient to cultural Marxist precepts, not from economists abiding by the principles of economics as a science.
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