The BBC is today have a nice little right-on orgasm as it interviews a UN commissioner on refugees and their beloved heroine Angeline Jolie-Pitt (she's attractive! she had cancer! she is a luvvie!).
There will, as ever, be little to see here. The refugee crisis is building across the world. Statistically, there has been a drop in war fatalities over the past two years across the world.
There are less hot wars now than in the historic past - although of course more trouble in the Middle East which is closer to Europe and more accessible.
There are also ongoing issues across Africa and Asia, whilst Europe, South America, North America, North Asia and Australia remain almost entirely at peace.
Yet war and escaping from it are blamed as the cause of migration. The simpler fact is the huge population growth and limited economic progress (I mean this on a good way) means there are literally far more people able to try to move for a better life.
The major world population growth areas left are Africa and South Asia. In Africa Nigeria takes a big lead and in Asia it is Pakistan and Bangladesh. Benighted countries these, unsurprisingly people will want to leave for something better as they mature.
This is the true driver of migration. To me, our futureselves will look back in sneeringly at the lefty approach of today; allowing mas migration to destabilise strong societies with the unwanted from failing societies. You can argue this too happened in the opening up of the US, but the scale is different - plus there was little to destabilise in the US and no one technically there at all beyond the Indians.
Instead in the future we will see a much more Australian approach to life, with borders controlled more effectively to stop ever increasing numbers of migrants from over-running society; again, this is what happened in the Dark Ages too so it is not without precedent in history, far from it.
It is not about blaming migrants themselves, who would not want a better future. However, society in Europe will be able to cope with a few millions of migrants a year at most; the current 10's of millions will not be sustainable, no matter how much UN and fellow-travellers would like it to be.
15 comments:
Why not put up another two maps - one with capital flows, the other flows of goods and services. Can't see why labour should be restricted when capital and goods are moving towards freedom of movement.
As a Capitalist, please explain
"You can argue this too happened in the opening up of the US..."
Over time you had the wholesale destruction of a fully formed agrarian society and culture.
"the scale is different - plus "there was little to destabilise in the US and no one technically there at all beyond the Indians."
Ahh ok the whole sacle destruction of a people is of little consequence as they did not have the force of arms to resist.
You generally find that it is often that people indigenous to a land do not do well when lareg scale migrations come their way. Ask the "Groove ware" people, the Celts, the Byzantines, the Aborigines, the Mauri's, North American Indians, the Greek Cypriots, The Palestinans to name a few...
Water will be tghe next resource - interesting to see shytes like Nestle going around Lebanon and other places buying up water supplies.
The left despises Western nations, Western societies and Western civilisation. The left believes that the West is the root of all evil and the cause of all the world's problems. Leftists also despise most of the people in their own countries, particularly the white working class. So the leftists in this country want mass immigration without integration in order to make Britain less British. They want to dilute and marginalise British culture and destroy any sense of a shared British identity.
Therefore they don't want immigrants who are likely to integrate with British society and adopt a British identity. They want immigrants who will reject British culture and who share their hatred of everything Western. They also prefer immigrants who lack any skills that could get them a job in a modern European economy, because those unfortunates will end up as long-term welfare dependents. This encourages the growth of the welfare state and thus the extension of state power, as well as providing a pool of frustrated and discontented people who might be open to radicalisation.
The left's stance on immigration is not the result of stupidity or an inability to face reality. It is an entirely deliberate attempt to destroy British society.
Malthus - that is your definition not mine. I don't think migration is about labour - avoiding a war or illness is not the same as seeking a job. Plus, you say why as a capitalist I have to explain myself in Marxian terminology, give over.
Free movement of people globally would be a social disaster - this is not some exercise in searching the bounds of theory.
The rise in mass migration has nothing to do with wars or famines, we've had those ad infinitum over the last 70 years without the current effects. The reason is that globalisation has increased wealth in the poor parts of the country to such an extent that some (not all of course) of the people there can now afford to try and travel to the West. When your only aim in life is to get enough food and water to survive to tomorrow, travelling to the West is not on your agenda. When you have some money saved, then it can be.
It is precisely because the worlds poor are getting richer that we see so many of them at our borders.
Agree with above; freedom from the 'copper cage' and dirt cheap mobile networks have also allowed intellectual and knowledge barriers to be easily crossed; village folk from hard scrabble goat villages now wear the same Chinese jeans and trainers as are sold in Matalan, and with a 2G phone in their shirt pocket and the west's success in raising just about everyone in the world to an income of over $1 a day they are fully informed and mobile.
And yes CU it's always worth repeating that migration isn't the fault of the migrants - but also worth remembering that the ones who get their passage fee, survive the cross-sahara trip and a sea crossing will tend to be the lawless, the psychopaths, the bullies, the gangsters and the hard-men. Who may well have killed other migrants along the route. So we don't end up with a representative population but with elements not easily tamed.
And when the water and food crisis hits, as it will, it will become a primitive fight for survival.
Perhaps instead of importing people from failing cultures, we should just revert to exporting our more successful culture?
SL,
Not sure we ever stopped.
The USA began their ban on unlimited immigration way back in the 1880s. At this time the Indians were still occupying some native territory.
A ban on all Chinese migrants was placed for 10 years.
Seen today as a racist and phobic action to the arrival of yellow skins, it was in fact much more about economic issues. The 1840s gold rush and the 1860s railroad building. The anti-Chinese violence really got going in the early 1870s. Coinciding with the recession and the agricultural industrialisation of the west.
The more restrictive US immigration laws, the ones that keep us out today, came from the 1910 and 1924 restrictions on free movement.
That was European immigration fleeing the post WW1 end of empires, recessions, anarchy and general poverty of pauper Europe.
wisely the US restricted immigration. The Italians and Swedes, Irish and Germans who poured in in huge numbers have proved to be hardworking, good, decent American citizens. Unlikely the US could have managed if anyone who wanted could turn have continued just turning up.
The management of US immigration {albeit with huge holes in the process that allowed many millions, and still does, to keep slipping into the country via the long borders} kept the USA quite stable right up to the present day.
Plus, you say why as a capitalist I have to explain myself in Marxian terminology, give over.
Marxist is your term and not mine. Labelling it as such rather than explaining what is wrong about free movement of labour is telling.
Would appear you'd be happy with their cash and their goods, but if a better qualified individual were to come over and do your job at a lesser rate you'd be on to your union about it.
We want the best doctors, engineers and even financial brains. Why limit the economy and the UK's prospects in total?
Malthus, um, I am certainly not a union member.
There is more to society than what you are on about. if everyone comes to the UK it will collapse as the government cannot provide services or house everybody. The market can only adjust over time, as can the culture.
300,000 a year is totally unsustainable as the rate of migration currently.
I think there is a deep and developing problem out there.
We have IS, what we call a bunch of terrorists who sort of have a set of common beliefs that unify them better than their own nationality etc and think that their ideas should be followed by the world, like it or not because they are right.
We have a well educated fairly wealthy middle class who live in cities and speak English and have a set of (left and right) wing beliefs that unify them better than their own nationality etc and think that their ideas should be followed by the world, like it or not because they are right.
Listening to R4 Today 0750:
Dr Michelle Harrison Global Head of Public Affairs at Kantar.
Basically pointed out that amongst the general population we are about as pro/anti EU as France/Germany. Most people do not find EU membership very important.
The key line was
Though polls indicate that the majority are pro-eu, the fact is that the over 45s are largely pro brexit and the over-45s vote.
The outcome really depends on whether or not the young (under 45!) vote.
And any pollster that thinks they can predict that is making things up.
I've just got back from Milan (my Wife's 50th to see our favourite band MUSE at the Assago stadium - brillig !)
Having visited Turkey I vowed never to visit a poor country again. I feel really uncomfortable being approached by beggars - I am a complete softie, and within no time at all our money is gone so I'd rather not go to these places at all. I cannot relax.
I did not expect, when I booked Milan:
A) it to be quite so buttock-clenchingly expensive (I knew it would be steep - but £7.50 a pint !!!)
B) it to have been hit so hard by the migration crisis
The streets and parks are literally teeming with African and Asian men trying to sell wrist bands, selfie sticks and flowers
On our first night we were sitting at a restaurant table. We'd already decided that we'd take limited cash with us (to budget for the extraordinary high prices) when were were approached by a guy selling flowers. It was really awkward. I disliked that situation in Turkey but did not expect it here. I was about to buy one when wifey looked at me daggers, "But the guy's got to eat." I said (he looked thin) "Either he gets it or the hard working waitress - not both." said my wife.
And that was the choice - such were our straightened finances.
Henceforth I did not give any beggar or trader any business. Here is the issue:
There is an aparthied of sorts going on in the EU and it is (by circumstance) delineated along racial lines. These men are being swatted aside as though they were inhuman, as though they were flies. I expect many of the people swatting them are EU socialists too.
This system of sub-classing these people cannot go on. There is a huge elephant in this room. It is utterly bizarre to see the Italians going about their business as though this is not happening.
There will have to be some sort of wealth redistribution and levelling. One thing can be assured. The unelected Angelina Jolie won't be paying her proportionate share for this.
"Agree with above; freedom from the 'copper cage' and dirt cheap mobile networks have also allowed intellectual and knowledge barriers to be easily crossed;"
A technical zenith coincides with a cultural nadir. Italian political graffiti is chic - the hip-hop stuff that has taken over the place, Milan can do without.
All of North Italy is a bit Sierra-Leoneish now, and they're nearly all there courtesy of Mr Cameron bombing Gaddafi (DC also has the blood of those Brit tourists in Tunisia on his hands).
Actually had someone doing the rounds of cafe tables explaining he'd not long arrived from Libya - didn't get a very generous reaction from the locals. In Venice you get approached the minute you walk out of the station.
Going to Naples this summer - be interesting to see what it's like there. Northern Italians will tell you that Africa starts at Rome.
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