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Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

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Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#11

Post by mytailorisrich »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #9

European countries must choose between Americanisation (becoming a nation of immigrations) or Japanification (becoming an elderly nation with plateauing economics) because of the low birth rates & high life expectancy. I see the UK/France going for the former option and Poland/Hungary going for the latter. Will be interesting to see how Germany and Sweden decide.

This is a false choice.

Population cannot grow forever, birth rates are dropping globally, and in fact birds rates are already below replacement rate in most developed countries.

So stagnant or decreasing population will happen, and I think actually should happen considering the global environmental crisis.

This does not imply plateauing economics. We need to start focusing on figures per capita, which means using education and technology to maximise productivity instead of relying on cheap human labour and overall GDP figures. What's important is for people to be better off individually.

Mass immigration is destroying homogeneous nation states in Europe, hence the backlash and hence why Eastern Asian countries do not want to follow down the same path.

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#12

Post by spacebanana7 »

mcntsh wrote: post #10
spacebanana7 wrote: post #9

European countries must choose between Americanisation (becoming a nation of immigrations) or Japanification (becoming an elderly nation with plateauing economics) because of the low birth rates & high life expectancy. I see the UK/France going for the former option and Poland/Hungary going for the latter. Will be interesting to see how Germany and Sweden decide.

They could also do better to incentivize their own people to have families. It doesn't have to be one of two sides of the neoliberal dystopian coin.

There's no recipe policymakers can follow to raise birthrates over extended periods of time. Sweden, South Korea and Poland have all tried generous financial supports that failed; the smaller Soviet republics tried authoritarian methods that failed.

Even nineteenth century France & Imperial Rome under Augustus don't appear to have been successful in raising birthrates, although I can't pretend to have great data for those examples.

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#13

Post by yurishimo »

I certainly understand the sentiment, but my question to someone on the "anti" immigration side would be this: what do you see as a possible alternative solution?

Populations are shrinking and to keep the economy in a healthy place, money needs to come from somewhere. The easiest solution is to add bodies via immigration. Otherwise taxes need to go up or governments need to spend money incentivizing people to start families, which will also probably necessitate an increase in taxes.

I moved to the Netherlands a couple of years ago and it's clear to me that the status quo will slowly degrade society eventually. Maybe not in my lifetime and perhaps not in the lifetimes of my future children, but not doing anything is also a decision.

I think if a country decides that it wants to go down one path that essentially leads to a "natural end" that should be their right as a democratic society, but don't try and hide your nations intentions behind flowery language about inclusivity and diversity. If some ideals are so important to the culture, then I think these nations need to be honest and start codifying more aspects of their desired culture into law or start investing heavily in social programs to foster that longing culture.

Please, I absolutely want to here some of your ideas on all sides of this issue! Right now I'm just an immigrant sitting on the sidelines waiting to see how this all shakes out.

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#14

Post by spacebanana7 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #11
spacebanana7 wrote: post #9

European countries must choose between Americanisation (becoming a nation of immigrations) or Japanification (becoming an elderly nation with plateauing economics) because of the low birth rates & high life expectancy. I see the UK/France going for the former option and Poland/Hungary going for the latter. Will be interesting to see how Germany and Sweden decide.

This is a false choice. Population cannot grow forever, birth rates are dropping globally, and in fact birds rates are already below replacement rate in most developed countries. So stagnant or decreasing population will happen, and I think actually should happen considering the global environmental crisis. This does not imply plateauing economics. We need to start focusing on figures per capita, which means using ed…

> Population cannot grow forever,

I think the best case long term scenario is population stability.

> We need to start focusing on figures per capita

Even per capita figures are distorted by the fact that naturally declining populations imply ageing populations. So even in a technologically improving society where output per worker was increasing, per capita figures could decrease.

To be clear I don't think Japanification is inherently bad - individual quality of life can still improve despite unflattering macroeconomic numbers. But it still involves tradeoffs.

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#15

Post by mytailorisrich »

yurishimo wrote: post #13

I certainly understand the sentiment, but my question to someone on the "anti" immigration side would be this: what do you see as a possible alternative solution? Populations are shrinking and to keep the economy in a healthy place, money needs to come from somewhere. The easiest solution is to add bodies via immigration. Otherwise taxes need to go up or governments need to spend money incentivizing people to start f…

Following this logic, population has to keep growing forever.

Thus won't happen and it is impossible for it to happen.

So immigration is just kicking the can down the road (with heavy societal cost) instead of facing the challenge head-on. That challenge is to accept that population will stop growing and even decrease and to adapt.

For instance, technology allows and will allow to automate many jobs.

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#16

Post by yurishimo »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #15
yurishimo wrote: post #13

I certainly understand the sentiment, but my question to someone on the "anti" immigration side would be this: what do you see as a possible alternative solution? Populations are shrinking and to keep the economy in a healthy place, money needs to come from somewhere. The easiest solution is to add bodies via immigration. Otherwise taxes need to go up or governments need to spend money incentivizing people to start f…

Following this logic, population has to keep growing forever. Thus won't happen and it is impossible for it to happen. So immigration is just kicking the can down the road (with heavy societal cost) instead of facing the challenge head-on. That challenge is to accept that population will stop growing and even decrease and to adapt. For instance, technology allows and will allow to automate many jobs.

I mostly agree, and I should have added something about that to my original post. In our current economies, things only "work" if the numbers keep increasing.

Personally, I think we have quite a long way to go before we reach a point where that cannot ever be true and I think we should account for the possibility that humanity finds a way to keep expanding forever. Whether that be into the ocean or outer space or perhaps ever vertically on Earth. But those are problems for a thousand years from now and I don't think are as worthy of consideration in 2024.

What sort of other challenges do you see that need to be addressed first and foremost?

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#17

Post by snowpid »

yurishimo wrote: post #13

I certainly understand the sentiment, but my question to someone on the "anti" immigration side would be this: what do you see as a possible alternative solution? Populations are shrinking and to keep the economy in a healthy place, money needs to come from somewhere. The easiest solution is to add bodies via immigration. Otherwise taxes need to go up or governments need to spend money incentivizing people to start f…

The discussions usually suffer that there are different migrations route: Call it illegal or legal migration. Illegal migration try to abuse the asylum system to get into Europe and then work there in low paid jobs (which are better conditions then home). 90 % of all migration discussion are about this. Legal migration is much more accepted (its legal anyway), more educated people. It also has its flaws: housing problems, migrates who refuse to learn the local language (very important in Netherlands recently). But this is less discussed and has more economic benefits for the local population.

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#18

Post by abdullahkhalids »

spookie wrote: post #7
thenaturalist wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? > These are some of the conclusions from a survey carried out online between March 27 and April 9 in the 27 member states, where 22,726 people over 15 years of age were interviewed, with a representative sample from each country. In addition to El PAÍS, the media organizations Gazeta Wyborcza, Internazionale, Ir, Kathimerini, Le Soir and Telex collaborated in the survey. They even publish…

It doesn't seem too representative, that equates to less than 1k per country. Also, the age range is quite small. Still worrisome. To be frank, given recent events and geopolitical tensions, people are divided on this matter.

Accuracy depends only on sample size, not the total population size. A 1k sample gives you a 95% confidence interval [1].

[1] https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/166/how-do-you-dec...

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#19

Post by yurishimo »

snowpid wrote: post #17
yurishimo wrote: post #13

I certainly understand the sentiment, but my question to someone on the "anti" immigration side would be this: what do you see as a possible alternative solution? Populations are shrinking and to keep the economy in a healthy place, money needs to come from somewhere. The easiest solution is to add bodies via immigration. Otherwise taxes need to go up or governments need to spend money incentivizing people to start f…

The discussions usually suffer that there are different migrations route: Call it illegal or legal migration. Illegal migration try to abuse the asylum system to get into Europe and then work there in low paid jobs (which are better conditions then home). 90 % of all migration discussion are about this. Legal migration is much more accepted (its legal anyway), more educated people. It also has its flaws: housing prob…

I agree. Personally, as someone who chose to come here from the US, I'm perfectly content to learn Dutch. Just as when Mexican immigrants come to the US, there is an expectation that you learn English (and it's quite explicit I might add!).

Do you think it would be helpful for governments to enforce more strict "integration" policies to satisfy the worries of the local population? If I'm not mistaken, Denmark has a much more robust integration process and I tend to see less pushback from Danes about immigrants.

Re: Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants

#20

Post by mcntsh »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #12
mcntsh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could also do better to incentivize their own people to have families. It doesn't have to be one of two sides of the neoliberal dystopian coin.

There's no recipe policymakers can follow to raise birthrates over extended periods of time. Sweden, South Korea and Poland have all tried generous financial supports that failed; the smaller Soviet republics tried authoritarian methods that failed. Even nineteenth century France & Imperial Rome under Augustus don't appear to have been successful in raising birthrates, although I can't pretend to have great data for…

Which generous financial supports are you talking about?
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