Eco-Fascism - Global Warming - Environment

With the science of climate change and global warming under attack as Australia experiences bushfires not seen before in scope and intensity, there are now clear links between white nationalism and niche environmentalism, or ‘eco-fascism’.  According to many this has included long term support from fossil fuels oligarchs' foundations in promoting eugenics and anti-immigrant sentiment as an ecological solution.

Fossil Fuels and Eco-Fascism (Image copyright Pexels)

Jeff Sparrow in The Guardian Australia presents a summary of his recent book Fascists Among Us: Online Hate and the Christchurch Massacre below:

'Eco-fascists and the ugly fight for 'our way of life' as the environment disintegrates

Genuine fascists remain on the political margins, but we can increasingly imagine the space that eco-fascism might occupy.

Earlier this year, when the fascist responsible for the El Paso massacre cited ecological degradation as part motivation for his killing spree, many considered him entirely deranged.

Eco-fascism sounds oxymoronic, a mashup of irreconcilable philosophies.

Yet, while eco-fascists violently oppose contemporary environmentalists, they often appropriate ideas from the past of the environmental movement.

In the United States, the first conservationists – men like Teddy Roosevelt – were wealthy big-game hunters trying to preserve creatures they liked to shoot.

These elite enthusiasts for “the manly sport with the rifle” blamed impoverished arrivals from eastern and central Europe for “pot hunting” – that is, for killing game for food or money rather than for fun. But they also saw immigrants as polluting America’s racial stock, making an explicit parallel between “lesser races” and the invasive species threatening native animals and plants.

On that basis, Julia Scott from the Daughters of the American Revolution could speak at the National Conservation Congress of 1910, urging attendees not only to protect flora and fauna but to conserve “the supremacy of the Caucasian race in our land”.

You can get a sense of the centrality of eugenic theory to the early movement from the career of Madison Grant, the most important environmentalist of his generation.

We can thank Grant for saving the American bison, the bald eagle, the pronghorn antelope, the Alaskan bear and the fur seal, as well as, according to his biographer, contributing to the preservation of elephants, gorillas, koalas and many other charismatic species.

But Grant also campaigned for the racist Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, and wrote the bestselling The Passing of the Great Race, or The Racial Basis of European History, an impassioned defence of white supremacy that Hitler described as his personal “bible”.

The book’s popularity in Germany was not coincidental. Grant, like many of his colleagues, derived his environmentalism from a conservative Romanticism, the philosophical source for Nazi concepts about the importance of Lebensraum (living room) and Blut und Boden (blood and soil).

Modern eco-fascists still draw on the same Romantic contrast between the sublime hierarchies of nature and the supposedly effete degeneracy of modernity.

They also exploit the legacy of a tendency influential in environmental circles in much more recent times.

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published a book called The Population Bomb, in which he argued that ecological destruction – and, indeed, almost all social problems – could be attributed to overpopulation.

As the historian Thomas Robertson notes, few signs of a mass environmental movement existed when The Population Bomb first appeared. Yet, “by the spring of 1970, Americans could hardly pick up a magazine or a newspaper without seeing mention of ecology and the environment”. That year, the first Earth Day attracted an astonishing 20 million people to environmental teach-ins, a result attributable at least in part to Ehrlich.

Today, his influence – and that of population theory more generally – has waned considerably, not least because the rate of world population growth has slowed substantially while his predictions of ever-worsening famines in the 1970s proved spectacularly wrong.

But progressive environmentalists also recognised the succour populationism provided to the extreme right.

The attribution of ecological destruction to demographic growth obscures the social relations through which, for instance, a mere 20 fossil fuel companies can be linked to more than one-third of greenhouse gas emissions in the modern era.

Worse still, arguments that (in theory) blame all people often (in practice) target particular people: usually the poor and the oppressed.

The Population Bomb itself opened with Ehrlich describing how he’d understood the case for population control “emotionally” during a visit to Delhi where, he said, the streets “seemed alive with people” and the “dust, noise, heat and cooking fires gave the scene a hellish aspect”. At the time, Delhi housed some 2.8 million while the population of Paris stood at about eight million – and yet it would be difficult to imagine Ehrlich reacting with equivalent disgust to crowds on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

Other populationists came to oppose not just fertility but also immigration, on the basis that, if the teeming masses from poor nations moved to the rich world, they’d adopt a western resource-heavy lifestyle. As a result, as academics Sebastian Normandin and Sean A Valles argue, America’s modern anti-immigrant movement “was built and led by – and in some cases is still led by – a network of conservationists and population control activists”.

The vast majority of greens now disavow the environmental populationist John Tanton, who, according to Susan A Berger, constructed many of the anti-Mexican organisations relied upon by Donald Trump as he electioneered for his border wall during the 2016 poll.

Yet the argument that ordinary people, rather than social structures, should be blamed for climate change still circulates – and invariably pushes in rightwing directions.

Think of the El Paso shooter and the document in which he justified his racial massacre.
“If we can get rid of enough people,” he wrote, “then our way of life can become more sustainable.”
The glibness with which he advocates environmental murder marks the El Paso perpetrator as distinctly fascist.

Fortunately, genuine fascists remain on the political margins in the English-speaking world. Nevertheless, we can increasingly imagine the space that eco-fascism might occupy. When asylum seekers fleeing floods and famines arrive on Australian shores in their millions, how will politicians respond?

Unless there’s a radical shift in the political culture, they will, presumably, rely upon the strategies perfected during decades of bipartisan anti-refugee campaigning, deploying the familiar arsenal of boat turnbacks, naval patrols and offshore detention, albeit on a much, much larger scale.

In other words, they’ll embrace an approach already advocated by European racist populists like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, who posits massively intensified border policing as a “realistic” response to the inevitability of the environmental disaster.

Just as the stop-the-boats campaigners of recent decades depict refugee advocates as indifferent to drownings at sea, the supporters of “green” border policing will denounce climate activists for sabotaging “practical” responses to climate change with their utopianism.

It’s not difficult to imagine “eco-authoritarianism” or what Naomi Klein calls “climate barbarism”: a politics centred on the state making “our way of life” sustainable as the environment disintegrates. Future governments committed to this project will be able to draw upon the vast array of coercive powers they’ve acquired over the past decades: draconian anti-protest laws; secret trials and imprisonment; the deployment of the army to quell civil disturbances; and so on.

Eco-fascism represents a related but distinctive tendency. It will emerge not through the state but as a political movement, with people like the El Paso perpetrator violently defending climate privilege against immigrants, environmentalists and progressives.

We’re nowhere near that point yet. But it’s a lot less unimaginable than it should be.
Jeff Sparrow’s new book, Fascists Among Us: Online Hate and the Christchurch Massacre, is out now through Scribe.'

For more blogs and articles about white nationalism, environment and population growth click through.

Brexit and Anti-Immigration Sentiment in White Australia

There has been gross over simplification of Brexit to supposedly avoid bureaucracy, the EU, Europe and increasing antipathy towards immigration by ageing electorates through populist politicians.

However, many would suggest Australia had a form of Brexit upon colonisation via the First Fleet 1888 by the British, then after Federation in 1901 the bi-partisan 'White Australia Policy' inspired by British eugenics movement (and finally ended after mostly opposition by NGOs, churches etc.).

Fast forward to the supposed crisis of Tampa when then Australian Prime Ministers helped start the demonisation of refugees with able support from mainstream media including Murdoch's NewsCorp, then carried further by society in creating antipathy towards non-Europeans; a new proxy white Australia policy.

Further, there are clear links between ideology, political and media tactics of white nativism or white nationalism inspired by eugenics, which has been mainstreamed in the US and UK; with further links onto the fringes of Europe.

White nationalism, white nativism or eugenics all share a clear architecture including astro turfing, manipulation of media, fake news etc., that can also be linked to radical right libertarians or elements of neo-liberalism by global corporates, via think tanks, to deflect attention away from tax avoidance, interference in domestic policies, cast doubt on climate change etc.

Australia Ready for Anti-Immigrant Brexit? (Image copyright Pexels)

'The new conventional wisdom in Canberra doesn't stack up

By Sam Roggeveen

November 5, 2019 — 12.00am

It is Canberra’s new conventional wisdom: the government’s unexpected election victory gives Prime Minister Scott Morrison stature and stability that his recent predecessors all lacked. The last decade of political dysfunction is behind us. The trouble is, this view is based solely on very recent events in one country alone. What if we took a global perspective over a longer period?

A political transformation has been under way in Western democracies for decades now, quietly and in the background for most of that time, though in recent years it has broken cover. In the US it produced Donald Trump, in the UK Brexit, and in Europe the rise of new right-wing populist movements.

Western democracy has hollowed out. It has happened in two stages. First, the public has drifted away from major political parties, the institutions that once connected them to the political process. In every Western nation, mainstream centre-right and centre-left parties are in decline. In the early to mid-20th century, party affiliation was a question of class, religion and family inheritance – you voted a certain way because your parents and peers did too. But for decades now membership of the big parties has fallen and the share of the vote they can rely on has decreased.

In response (and this is stage two), the big parties have found new ways to survive. They have evolved from amateur mass-membership organisations to small, professionalised outfits financially reliant on big donors and, increasingly, the state. Other than at election time, the big parties don’t really need the public.

So, voters withdrew from political parties, and the parties responded with a withdrawal of their own. The result is that the public square is left empty and politics is hollow.

In Europe, right-wing populist parties have done well because the minority of voters who are attracted to those ideas have slipped from the grip of the big parties. But as France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Greens show, the big parties are not bleeding votes only to the right, they are losing them in the centre and on the left too.

In America, the weakening of parties helped mavericks like Trump and Bernie Sanders, who tied themselves to the big parties out of self-interest rather than conviction.

In the UK and Australia, the decline of the big parties has produced a different kind of instability. In both countries the voting system makes it hard for small parties to win seats even though their vote share has increased. Yet as the big parties have become less popular, they have also become less stable and more vulnerable to shocks from outsiders and ambitious MPs. That’s what caused Brexit, essentially an internal Tory Party dispute stirred up by Eurosceptic backbenchers and Nigel Farage’s UKIP.

It is also what has produced the leadership churn in Australian politics over the last decade, a succession of tight election results, and two periods of minority government. Australians are abandoning the major parties at record rates. At the same time, these shrinking and insular parties are increasingly cut off from a bored and unengaged Australian public.

Lacking genuine connections to a deep social base, major-party MPs look to their peer groups in politics and the media for inspiration, which is where they got the idea that changes of leadership might fix their problems and why, for instance, Morrison borrows Trumpian language on "negative globalism".

The 2019 election resolved none of these underlying problems. True, the Liberal and Labor parties have now changed their rules so that leadership coups are harder to mount, but this is much more than just a leadership issue.

Again, if we broaden our view beyond Australian shores, we can see why. Angela Merkel has been German chancellor for 14 years, yet in that period, German politics has been completely transformed – Alternative fur Deutschland, a populist party that didn’t even exist when Merkel took office, is now the official opposition in the Bundestag.

It would be foolish to assume that Australian politics, still dominated by two parties the public cares little for, is suddenly immune to upheaval on that scale.

Sam Roggeveen is director of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute and author of Our Very Own Brexit: Australia’s Hollow Politics and Where It Could Lead Us.'

For more articles and blogs about white nationalism, immigration and Australian politics click through.

High Global Population Growth Fears Debunked

Since the 1970s, and earlier with Malthus and eugenics movement, we have been presented with the threat of catastrophic population growth due to fertility rates in the less developed world, then due to 'immigration' from the less developed world when in fact we are facing population decline from mid century; contrary to UN Population Division data which inflates future headline growth?

This 'misunderstanding' has been highlighted by science journalist Fred Pearce in 'The Coming Population Crash: and Our Planet's Surprising Future'; Hans Rosling in 'Don't panic the truth about population'; Prof. Wolfgang Lutz of Vienna's IIASA and Sanjeev Sanyal demographer at Deutsche Bank.

Global Population Growth or Decline? (Image copyright Pexels.com)

'Book review: 'Empty Planet' explores the world's next biggest population threat

Humanity is facing an imminent catastrophe, Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson assert in their new book

The central assertion Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson make in Empty Planet is one that readers of the daily news or regular government reports will find deeply counter intuitive. According to all that received wisdom, there is a worldwide population crisis, with humans reproducing at ever-increasing rates, rapidly eating up all the world’s resources and driving the engines of runaway climate change.

Stripped of modern trappings such as greenhouse gases and industrial meat farming, this is fairly close to the old vision of 18th-century scholar and theorist Thomas Malthus. He declared back in 1798 that in conditions of economic and cultural stability, the human population would continue to increase, even to the point where it chokes resources and overburdens the Earth itself.

Such a view has been the standard for centuries, and some of its proponents have made quite tidy sums writing books about the doom it foretells, most notably Paul Ehrlich. His 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb warned of imminent, widespread famines as the result of human overpopulation.

Bricker and Ibbitson say such books and the thinking behind them are “completely and utterly wrong”. They agree with Malthus, Ehrlich and company that humanity is indeed facing an imminent population catastrophe – but the problem won’t be overpopulation. “The great defining event of the 21st century – one of the great defining events in human history – will occur in three decades, give or take, when the global population begins to decline,” they write. “Once that decline begins, it will never end.”

The authors know they’re working against not only popular perception, but also raw numbers. They point out that the United Nations predicts the human population to hit 11 billion in the 21st century, up from the nearly eight billion on Earth today, an increase from five billion since 1950.

But Bricker and Ibbitson say that population growth rates have declined slightly in the 21st century, particularly in what they refer to as the richest places on the planet. Japan, Korea, Spain, Italy, much of Europe – all such places are facing long-term reproduction rates that won’t come close to sustaining their current population levels. And they claim this same levelling and then downward trend will be seen in places such as China, Brazil, Indonesia and even such fertility hot zones as India and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The main reason Bricker and Ibbitson cite for their certainty about all this is that the floor of the world’s basic prosperity is steadily rising. Two things happen as a result: an increasing number of women in developing countries are gaining more education and more control over reproduction, and an increasing number of couples are therefore either postponing having children of their own or having far fewer children than their ancestors did.

Empty Planet makes the case that this change is not only inevitable but already well under way, and that it will be permanent: humanity will simply go into terminal decline, no asteroid or other global catastrophe required. As mentioned, readers have heard such alarming claims before – Ehrlich, for instance, was certain the human population would reach its breaking point in the 1970s.'

For more articles and blogs on population decline, population growth and immigration click through.

Value of International Students, Education and Immigration

The value of international education and international students, tangible and intangible, is egregiously under - estimated by the application of a narrow 'white nativist' or politically opportunistic prism that ignores inconvenient facts and dynamics.

Many Australians of Anglo Irish heritage focus too much upon international students described as ‘immigrants’, their potential for permanent residency (with significant hurdles) and demands for same ‘foreign’ students to return home in support of their home country.

Conversely same qualifications are used by Australians internationally, many of the same gain other residency or even dual citizenship, yet there are no demands for the same e.g. to return home and/or pay back fees?

This dynamic is simply a reflection of increasing geographical and social mobility (taken for granted in the EU) for all in the developed and many in the less developed worlds for whom higher education and/or technical skills and languages improve their lives and others’.

Meanwhile too many narratives from our mono-cultural political, media and social elites seem about creating ‘us vs them’ for voters, and worse, deep seated Nativist or colonial ideology.

Global population is expected to peak mid-century whereby there may be increased competition for people, with sub-Saharan Africa being the only place with population growth and significant younger demographic cohorts.

Late news: The U.K. has announced the re-introduction of post graduate work visas for international university graduates.

International Students and Education Create Value (Image copyright Pexels.com)

Australia should try to keep more international students who are trained in our universities

Jihyun Lee - September 13, 2019 6.02am AEST

Australia’s education system takes almost one in ten of all international students from countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

That’s according to the latest Education at a Glance report from the OECD. But Australia should do more to retain some of those students after graduation or it risks losing good talent overseas.

A degree of talent

The OECD report says Australia’s higher education sector is heavily reliant on international students. They represent about 48% of those enrolled in masters and 32% in doctoral programs.
This is partly due to a lack of interest among Australians in pursuing higher-degree study compared to other countries, about 10% in Australia versus 15% across OECD countries.

International students make up 40% of doctoral graduates in Australia, compared to 25% across OECD countries. That’s higher than the US (27%) and Germany (18%), the other two popular destinations for international students.

Australian students are not choosing some STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects as much as those in other OECD countries. For example, only 17% of adults (aged 25 to 64) with a tertiary degree had studied engineering, manufacturing and construction.

Other comparable industrialised countries such as Sweden (25%), Korea (24%), Japan (23%) and Canada (21%) are obviously doing better.  This trend appears to be getting worse because the proportion of new students entering STEM-related bachelor degree programs is lower in Australia (21%), compared to 27% across OECD and partner countries.

While the government here provides for up to four years of post-higher-degree stay for international students, it is inevitable that Australia faces a drain of foreign-born specialists who were educated in Australia.

In 2017, the Australian government granted permanent visas to only 4% of foreign students and temporary graduate visas to only 16% to live in Australia after completing their study. It is obvious then that many international students return home after they study in Australia.

What can the Australian government do?

We need to provide better incentives for those who complete a higher-degree program, especially in the STEM areas, to stay on in Australia.

The OECD’s report says people who studied information and communication technologies (ICT) and engineering as well as construction and manufacturing will continue to benefit greatly from strong labour-market opportunities everywhere in the world.

Australia can do better in attracting younger generations to be trained in the STEM area at higher degree levels. We then need to try to retain more of the foreign-born higher-degree holders rather than sending them back home.

Being afraid of an influx of Chinese or Indian students who will contribute to development of innovation and technological changes in this country should become a thing of the past.

Good news for Australia’s education

The Education at a Glance program aims to give an annual snapshot of the effectiveness of educational systems – from early childhood to doctoral level – across all OECD and partner countries.

At almost 500 pages, the 2019 report does contain some good news for Australia. Australia spends a higher proportion of its GDP (based on public, private and international sources) on education, 5.8% compared to the OECD average of 5.0%.

The Australian education system strongly promotes compulsory education. Our 11 years of compulsory education is the longest among OECD countries. That means each student gets 3,410 more hours over the period of compulsory education.

When it comes to people going on to further studies, the proportion of tertiary-educated Australians has increased over the past ten years. It is now 51%, compared to the OECD average of 44%.

On graduation, the average debt for Australian students is US$10,479 (A$15,243), one of the lowest among OECD countries. It’s about half that of New Zealand US$24,117 (A$35,080), which has similar tuition fees and financial support systems.

Education pays off

Australian young adults with vocational qualifications have a higher employment rate (83%) than the OECD average (80%).  Although earning power is still greater for those with a higher level of educational attainment, the financial return from more schooling is far smaller in Australia.

Compared to those with upper secondary education, full-time tertiary-educated Australian workers earn 31% more, compared to 57% more on average across OECD countries. Adults with a master’s or doctoral degree earn 52% more, compared to 91% more on average across OECD countries.

The OECD attributes this trend partially to good labour-market opportunities for those with upper secondary vocational qualifications.  The OECD also notes that the average employment rate for Australian tertiary-educated adults is 85%, only two percentage points higher than the 83% for those with a vocational upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary qualification. This is one of the smallest differences across OECD countries.

For more articles and blogs about international education, immigration, population growth and white nationalism click through.

Population Growth or Decline?

Many believe that local, national and global population growth is exponential leading to calls to avoid immigration or cut, need for population control etc., but is it true?  No, according to experts, outside of the UN Population Division, population will peak mid century then decline while ageing further.

What does this mean for the world and nation state economies?  Competition for people whether immigration and temporary workers to fill gaps and support budgets.

From The Lowy Institute:

'Harnessing demographic destiny

GRANT WYETH

Competition for the world’s best and brightest will intensify as global population growth slows. Is Australia ready?

Managing Population Decline (Image copyright Pexels)

Once confident predictions that the world’s population will reach billion by the end of this century are beginning to be debunked. It is now appears more likely that the global population will hit a ceiling before reaching nine billion by mid-century, and then begin to decline.

This tapering of world population growth is being driven by two key revolutions. One is increasing urbanisation, with more and more people living in cities, which makes children less of an essential resource for families then they would be in rural areas. The other is female education and empowerment, with women deciding – when given the choice – that they desire no more than two children.

Such global trends have significant implications for individual countries, both in national capabilities and geostrategic calculations. This is particularly the case for Australia. Countries that are able to both retain and attract people will find themselves at a distinct advantage.

Currently there is a low-intensity competition for human capital between mostly Western states. These countries have recognised a basic demographic problem; that their birth rates are too low to replace their populations, and without immigration they will end up with elderly societies without the workers to sustain their living standards. Alongside this, attracting highly skilled migrants also boosts productivity.

Yet the population strategies of most of these countries are under threat by parochial narratives that place the political sustainability of their immigration programs at risk.

These narratives are born out of a paradox within the nation-state, where elements within these countries believe that the strategies of the state are undermining the nation. Such sentiment seems uninterested in economic imperatives, or indeed foreign policy concerns about their country’s capabilities in relation to others. Yet these issues are vital to a national interest, and therefore need to be aligned to how a country sees itself….

….. However, it would not be prudent for Australia to rely on this possibility.  By seeking to enhance its own capabilities, Australia can help to escape the influence of external forces. Which means in a world of declining birth rates, Australia’s immigration program should be seen as the country’s principal strategic asset. This indicates that Australia may need to develop something it currently lacks – a prominent positive public narrative around its highly successful immigration story.

A recent speech from Canada’s Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer offers a good example of the way Australia can develop a positive public narrative around immigration. Scheer highlighted the bravery of migration, the honour Canada feels at being chosen by migrants, and the prosperity that has developed in Canada as a consequence of these migrant flows. It is a speech that no politician in Australia could seemingly deliver (bar its requisite politicking) but is a sentiment that is embraced by all Canadian political parties (with the exception of the Quebec nationalist parties).

As a competitor to Australia for skilled labour, the message Scheer conveyed helps to reinforce support for Canada’s immigration program. And if national competition for people intensifies as global population declines, it will provide Canada with a distinct advantage that Australia currently cannot match.’

For more articles about population growth, immigration and NOM net overseas migration, click through.

Immigration to Support Retirees, Pensioners and Workforce

While most politicians, media and society assume ‘immigration’ drives unemployment, recent Australian research from CEDA contradicts this, as did research presented by left workers’ ‘Solidarity’ in 2012.

Why has it ever been an issue?  Political tactics and strategy, amplified by media and societal word of mouth have felt compelled to promote nativist or white nationalist tropes (from the past) as an appeal to native or incumbent citizens, creating fear, anxiety and even anger (see ‘alt right’), as both an electoral strategy and ideology (e.g. blaming immigrants vs. wage rises).

International Temporary Resident Workers and Professionals (Image copyright Pexels)

From The Guardian:

‘Temporary skilled migration has not undercut Australian jobs or conditions, report finds

Politicians’ ‘revolving door’ response to foreign workers frustrates businesses, industry group CEDA says Temporary skilled migration has not undercut job opportunities or conditions for Australian workers but the “revolving door” political response to foreign workers has frustrated businesses, an industry report has found.

The report from the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), released on Monday, said that skilled migrants, particularly those on temporary skilled working visas, have been an “overwhelming net positive” for the Australian economy and have not had a negative impact on either the wages or participation rates of Australian-born workers.

However, the report said that despite economic evidence suggesting migration is a positive, “governments have responded to community concern with a seeming revolving door of reviews, reports and frequent policy changes to Australia’s temporary skilled migration program”.’

From SBS Australia:

‘Migrants don’t actually threaten Australian workers’ jobs, new analysis reveals

A new report found immigration has not harmed the earnings of local workers.

Temporary skilled migrants have not displaced Australian workers despite fears immigrants threaten the local job market, new analysis by an independent economic organisation has revealed.

Research by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) has also shown immigration has not harmed the earnings of local workers.

The report, "Effects of temporary migration", showed there are about two million people on temporary visas, including students, working holiday-makers, skilled workers and New Zealand citizens.

The research, released on Monday, showed 70 per cent of temporary skilled migrants reside in NSW and Victoria, which have the lowest rates of unemployment in Australia.’

From Solidarity.net

‘Immigration is not to blame for cuts to jobs and wages

9 August 2012

The suggestion that bringing 457 visa workers from overseas is coming at the expense of “local jobs” reinforces the myth that immigration causes unemployment and drives down wages.

In fact evidence from Australia and internationally shows that immigration actually creates jobs. In his book, Immigration and the Australian Economy, William Foster’s surveys over 200 studies on immigration and wages. He found there was, “a marginally favourable effect on the aggregate unemployment rate, even in recession”.

In a 2003 paper economist Hsiao-chuan Chang wrote that, “there is no evidence that immigrants take jobs away from the local Australian over the past twelve years… This supports the conclusion from existing research”.

This is because new migrants generate demand for products and services, such as housing and food. Many of them bring savings to help pay for these things, further boosting the economy and jobs.’


Politicians and media commentators could explain more clearly why immigration helps a nation and its economy.  Some of these factors include ageing and declining tax paying work forces in permanent population, with increasing proportion (vs. workforce) of retirees and pensioners requires more tax income to fund related services, and higher temporary immigration means (most of) the same temporary cohort will not also be a drag on state budgets in future.

For more articles and blogs about immigration, white nationalism and economics click through.

Temporary Immigration - Ageing Population Growth - Work Force - Tax Base

For the past 10+ years Australia, the Anglo and western worlds have been obsessing in the mainstream about 'immigration' and 'population growth' as negative factors for the environment, economy, quality of life, infrastructure, traffic congestion, 'carry capacity' etc. based upon misrepresentation and/or misunderstanding of data, analysis and facts.

However, in Australia as opposed to most nations, pension reform, introduction of superannuation, skilled permanent immigration and net financial contributions from temporary resident 'churn over' should maintain a balance between social responsibilities of the government and financial management.

Australian Demography, Population and Immigration (Image copyright Pexels)

In much of this public discourse, political lobbying and news based PR, many facts and much data are distorted and/or ignored.  This includes conflation of permanent and temporary immigration, the 'NOM net overseas migration' (border movements) equated with directly with '(permanent) immigration', definition change of the NOM (used only by UK, Australia and NZ) by the UN in 2006 inflating/spiking headline numbers, individuals whether international students, backpackers and other temporaries, along with Australians, caught up in the NOM are described as 'immigrants' (even when the majority have neither access to permanent residency nor an interest).

Further, false correlations are made with international data suggesting infinite population growth when peak fertility has long passed (ex sub Saharan Africa), comparisons made between different data sets, population is expected to peak (sooner rather then later according to some e.g. Deutsche Bank) and dismissing the impact of ageing work forces now retiring, increasing pension and related service responsibilities, with less tax payers in the permanent population; back grounded by a significant baby boomer 'die off' approaching.

This has been back grounded or reinforced by Nativist policies, creating fear, antipathy towards non-Europeans and encouraging isolationism e.g. strong borders, closed economies with tariff walls, low or no growth, and aspirations for 'sustainable population' (whatever that means).

The University of Melbourne's Peter McDonald analyses further in an article for The Conversation:

'Why cutting Australia’s migrant intake would do more harm than good, at least for the next decade

December 13, 2018 4.20pm AEDT

Australia’s population is among the fastest growing in the OECD with an increase of 1.7 per cent in 2016-17.

In Sydney and Melbourne traffic congestion has become so intolerable many believe a cut to migration would provide time for infrastructure such as roads and trains to catch up.

Net Overseas Migration was 262,000 in 2016-17, one of the highest levels on record.

They are all compelling reasons to cut the size of the migration program, right?

No, not right. Not at all.

Our migration program is no bigger than it was.

Including the humanitarian movement, the government migration program has been set at a near-constant level of a little over 200,000 since 2011-12.

In 2017-18, although the level set in the budget remained above 200,000, the actual intake was 179,000, including an unusually large intake of refugees mainly from Syria and Iraq.

The combined Skilled and Family Streams fell short of the levels set in the budget by 28,000. The reasons for this shortfall are unclear.

‘Net overseas migration’ is different to migration

Net Overseas Migration includes the government program but also other movements in to and out of Australia which both add to and subtract from it.

The net effect of all of these movements can change the recorded “net overseas migration” in ways that are inconsistent with what’s been happening to the migration program.

If, for instance, the Australian economy picked up and fewer Australians decided to leave for better prospects overseas, recorded “net overseas migration” would increase even if the migration program hadn’t.

The two have been moving increasingly independently since mid 2006 when the Australian Bureau of Statistics changed its definition of “resident”, making temporary residents more likely to be counted in the population and their movements counted in net overseas migration.

Over the past five years, the number of international students arriving has increased every year but there have been few international student departures.

Inevitably, the departures of students will increase in future years and recorded net overseas migration will fall sharply again.

So, forget the near-record official net overseas migration figure of 262,000 – the underlying level of net overseas migration is more likely to be around 200,000. The underlying level of population growth is about 1.4%, and falling.

We’ll need strong migration for at least a decade

A new study by Shah and Dixon finds there will be 4.1 million new job openings in Australia over the eight years between 2017 and 2024.

Over two million of these new openings will be due to “replacement demand”, effectively replacing the retirements from the labour force of baby boomers.

There will not be enough younger workers arriving to fill the gap….

It means that without migration Australia would face a labour supply crunch unlike anything it has ever faced before.

Slowing or redirecting it won’t slow congestion…

…Net overseas migration of 200,000 per annum would give us 6.8 million more people of traditional working age by 2051 than would no net migration, but only 400,000 more people aged 65 years and over.

It would place Australia in a better position to support its aged population than any other country in the OECD.'

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