Two recent events at opposite ends of the earth should serve to illuminate the world crisis which immigration poses for North European peoples in various parts of the globe.

The first of these particular events was the appeal by the British authorities for help from the Romanian police to deal with their citizens encamped in various well-known public spaces in London such as Hyde Park.  These people, speaking no English and with no jobs to go to, have simply come to Britain under the original 3 month permit for East European Citizens.  This time limit will be lifted on January 1^st so that under European Union law, Romanians and Bulgarians will, like the citizens of the eight other European states who joined the EU on January 1^st 2004, be free to come, obtain free treatment from the National Health Service, send their children free to British schools and after minimal waiting periods of a few months (which apply to British citizens) claim any or all of the 59 non-contributory social security benefits.  (See “Liberal Moralism on Immigration”, 8/2/13 and “Bill Emmott on the European Union”, 12/7/12 – the Wheelie Bin award.)

Coincidentally, and just in case Britain’s treatment of East Europeans falls short in practice of the EU ideal of the citizens of its member states being able to move anywhere at any time, according to a whim or a plan, the week beginning 8^th July saw the arrival of a European Parliament delegation of MEPs in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, whose East European population (mainly Poles and Lithuanians) has expanded from virtually zero in 2004 (when 8 East European states joined the EU) to over one third of the residents in under nine years, mostly single young men and couples with young children.  Needless to say the focus of the delegation’s attention was not the native English people who have had to endure huge overcrowding in hospitals and schools, some of their streets turned into virtual suburbs of Warsaw and Vilnius, but the welfare of the immigrants, many with no English and no jobs.

At the other end of the world, the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has announced that in future, asylum seekers arriving in boats from places to the north such as Malaysia and Indonesia will be sent to Papua New Guinea (by agreement with its prime minister).  This arrangement has been brought forward following riots in an asylum-detention centre on Nauru, a tiny island about 2500 miles North-east of Australia, with which Australia has a similar agreement.  The point is that most Australians see the boat people as trying to bypass the Australian immigration system which has been carefully crafted to admit for settlement only those who are assessed as likely to fit easily into Australian society and make a net contribution to it.  Alongside this policy of transferring asylum-seekers to places remote from Australia’s shores, is a government advertising campaign costing around £1.5 million per week stating that people without visas will not be allowed to settle in Australia.  Entirely predictably Prime Minister Rudd’s policy has drawn cries of “day of shame” etc. from pro-immigrant pressure groups such as the Greens  (leader Christine Milne).

Britain’s immigration rules undermined by EU’s “free movement” policy

While the British government has substantially tightened its entry requirements for people coming from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland (EU +EFTA), it regards itself as completely powerless to impose conditions on citizens of the EEA.  Instead of accepting that only Britain’s removing itself from the EU will allow it to regain control of its borders, the government has apparently set up a committee to think up ways of discouraging Romanians and Bulgarians from coming in very large numbers from January 1^st 2014 when the three month restriction is due to be lifted.

This futile activity has to fly in the face of the following realities:

On the income per head measure, Bulgaria is about where Britain was 100 years ago, i.e. about one fifth of today’s – Romania a little more.  Doctors’ and engineers’ pay is in about the same ratio.  On a key heath care indicator – infant mortality under one year of age – both countries have yet to meet the UK’s 1913 figure.

In fact so attractive is the UK and other West European countries to the peoples of Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia (all members of the EU),  that, almost uniquely in the world, their populations are actually falling by up to 0.3% per annum.

Pressure of Tropical Populations

The boat people of great concern to the Australian government come predominantly from South East Asia, a region with about 2,200 million people or 100 times Australia’s.  This region, including the Indian subcontinent and Indonesia, has birth rates in the range of 18 to 30 per 1,000 per annum.  (European peoples are in the range 8 to 13.)  The population of these territories has basically tripled in the last 60 years since obtaining their independence from Britain and the Netherlands (see “Europe and Asia”, table A and table B – a talk by S F Bush to the European Federation of Women, Hale, Cheshire, 21^st September 2000).

Put another way, in 1900 the British Empire with 426 million people was the most populous state on earth, with China at 413 million, just behind, representing 24% and 23% of the then world population of 1,780 million.  In 2012 the world’s population passed the 7 billion mark, an increase of over 5,000 million or 300% since 1900, while the population of the United Kingdom has increased by 29 million from 34 million or 85%.  Europe as a whole has increased much less than this in percentage terms, offset to some degree by increases in the countries of European settlement (ABCANZ).

Within the 5,000 million increase since 1900 the most significant components are the former British Indian Empire, (i.e. modern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ceylon) whose combined population has increased 550% from 270 million to around 1,600 million (an increase of almost the population of the whole world in 1900); China 228% (much less and due in large part of the one child policy); Indonesia (formerly Dutch East Indies) which has grown from 46 million to 237 million, an increase of 460%.

All these unprecedented colossal increases in a mere 112 years are due to the combined effect of birth rates in the 30s per 1,000 range, coupled with sharp declines in infant mortality, so that death rates are in the range 5-7 per thousand giving natural population increases of 2.5-3.0% per year.  Even these figures are dwarfed by contemporary sub-Saharan Africa, where the birth rates range from 36 (Kenya and Nigeria) to 46 in Mali and Niger.  In fact all but two of the 36 countries with the highest birth rates are in sub-Saharan Africa.  In 1947 Africa’s population was about half Europe’s: now it is double (see “Europe and Asia”).

High Birth Rates Maintain Countries in Poverty

Practically all of the countries and regions cited have annual GDP per head in the range of US$ 200-1,000 or about one two hundredth to one fortieth that of the United Kingdom.  These ratios haven’t changed much after the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars in aid since 1947.

Actions

1              Clearly with the numbers cited above, the only way forward for African and South Asian countries is drastic action to cut their birth rates, by state action and contraception.

2              European societies must not be seen as escape routes for bright, energetic Asians and Africans.  They must be encouraged by removal of the escape routes (i.e. immigration) to develop their talents in their own countries.

3              So far as the UK is concerned, this writer’s view is unchanged since his letter to the Times of London (2003) namely that only a complete stop to all immigration for 5 years will give the British government a chance to deal with its estimated half to three quarters of a million illegal immigrants, followed by a referendum in which the British people would decide how many immigrants should be admitted for the following ten years, including continuation of the zero option.

4              Such a policy would stop the population of Britain rising from its present 63 million (of which England has 53 million or 1,060 per square mile) to an intolerably congested figure of 72 million (England 62 million) by about 2031 (and rising).

5              It is of profound importance that the British government’s stated policy of reducing net immigration to the tens of thousands by 2015 be achieved.  At this very moment, local area plans for additional housing are based on the National Statistical Office (NSO) assumption of continuing net immigration of about 250,000!  It behoves everyone to query these NSO figures at their local (District) Council meetings on the plans and at the NSO itself, asking it to recomputed its population projections for a range of immigration possibilities, including zero and 50,000 net per annum in accordance with the Government’s target.

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