Swamping by Immigrants is Hardly Possible

Restrictionists often bring up a scenario where there are so many immigrants that natives become a tiny minority. In this post, I would like to show that under broad conditions this is not possible: immigrants will almost always remain a minority and will not even come close to becoming a majority. Even if they become a majority, it will not last long and that’s only if you make rather extreme assumptions. Actual swamping with a huge majority of immigrants presupposes even more outlandish assumptions. It is not impossible, but more of a theoretical possibility. If you are afraid of such a scenario you can avoid it with a rather modest restriction on the number of immigrants that for most purposes is not too far from open borders.

In the following discussion, I understand the terms “immigrant” and “native” rather literally: an immigrant is someone who immigrates to a country from another country where he grew up (and so he is an adult or at most an adolescent), and a native is someone who grew up in the country or will grow up there. Even more literally, you could understand this as the distinction between those who are foreign-born and those who are native-born. However, this is a rather technical definition. E.g. the current CEO of Daimler, Dieter Zetsche, was born in Istanbul, so you would have to classify him as an immigrant from Turkey in this sense although he has lived in Germany since he was three years old. Whether you view someone as an immigrant or a native should probably depend more on where someone grew up most of the time. Therefore, I will classify also those as natives who come to the country at a very young age even if they were born abroad. If you have ever seen how fast young children can pick up a new language, this is perhaps not unreasonable. Even if you disagree with me and go for the narrower definition, the results do not change a lot.

You could also have a different view because you think that children of immigrants and maybe even their grandchildren and so forth stay close to the culture their ancestors came from. You might assume persistence for some or all of their traits and that also the descendents of immigrants remain foreign (at least for some time and to a certain extent). I will address the implications of such a broader definition below. But for the moment I would like to stick with the narrower definition and define anyone as native who has lived in the country from age 10 on, and all others I will classify as immigrants.

Why is swamping such a convincing scenario for many people? My guess is that they run a naïve analysis as follows: Suppose you have 100 million people in a country, and each year 5 million immigrate. In the following, I assume no population growth for natives and immigrants to make things more transparent. Then after twenty years, there are 100 million immigrants. It would seem that the total population has risen to 200 million, of whom now natives are only 50%. One year down the road, natives apparently become a minority. After a century, you might think there will be a total of 500 million immigrants, so natives make up only one sixth of the total population then. This would be a situation that people probably have in mind, when they speak of the threat of swamping by immigrants.

The problem with this reasoning is that it is false. This is so because the naïve analysis ignores two separate effects.

The first effect is that although each year another 5 million immigrate, the total number of immigrants in the country will not rise indefinitely as a naïve analysis might suggest. If immigrants come at age 25 and have a life expectancy of 80 years, then after 55 years the initial immigrants will have died out on average. Surely, there will be new immigrants, but after a little more than half a century, they only replace immigrants who came earlier. Hence, with a fixed number of immigrants per year, the total number of immigrants in the country will eventually level off. It is a mistake to extrapolate from the growth you see in the beginning to indefinite growth. Here is what it looks like (I use the stylized assumptions from my previous post “Misinterpreting Growth of Immigrant Populations” for mortality, and I assume that immigrants come at age 25):

Immigrant Population over 100 years

The immigrant population grows linearly at first. But after about half a century, its growth slows down because previous immigrants die. After about 70 years, growth comes to a standstill, and the immigrant population stabilizes at about 288 million people (the exact number depends on my assumptions, my purpose here is only to demonstrate the effect, not its exact size in all situations).

The first effect is perhaps rather obvious once you have understood it, and it could easily be incorporated into the naïve analysis. So it would still seem as if natives end up in a minority of 1 to 2.88 or slightly more than a quarter of the total population. However, there is another effect that is even stronger and which starts to operate almost right away. And it is far less obvious. This second effect is the momentum effect that I have described in my previous post “Misinterpreting Growth of Immigrant Populations.” Feel free to read the post for further details. I will explain the effect anyway in a few words, so you can get the thrust of it even without this background.

The momentum effect in the above scenario works like this. The 5 million who arrive in one year are mostly young people who will soon start a family. With replacement fertility (my assumption to focus solely on the momentum effect to the exclusion of other effects), they will have about one child per immigrant (two per couple) over the next years. This means there are not only the 5 million immigrants, but also an additional 5 million children who are, by my narrow definition, natives (some of them were technically born abroad, but entered the country at age less than 10). When the children are old enough they again have children. With replacement fertility, those are another 5 million people who are also natives. Hence you have 2 to 1 natives per immigrant. Since a few of the initial immigrants have died by then, the ratio is a little lower (1.76 to 1 with the stylized assumptions in my previous post). Here is what it looks like (note that in my previous post I looked at immigration in one year whereas here I have a fixed number of immigrants each year, so this is an overlay of many such one-time cases):

Generations over 100 years

On the bottom you have immigrants (blue) as in the above graph (by assumption they come at age 25). The next two layers are their children (red), and their grandchildren (green). And the uppermost layer are all their further descendents (i.e. fourth and higher generations). As you can see, the first effect also applies to the second and third generations and for the same reasons, it only comes later. This becomes more obvious over 200 years:

Generations over 200 years

The uppermost layer keeps growing because there is a constant influx of immigrants. Each annual cohort grows into a population 2.76 times as large and then levels off. This means no people are lost, and because there are new immigrants each year, total population keeps growing (eventually by 2.76 times annual immigration per year).

Now, by assumption, there was also an initial native population of 100 million. I will add them to the uppermost layer (basically, this is the assumption that fourth and higher generation immigrants are natives in any sense). Here’s what you get:

Generations plus Natives

Per my narrow definition only the lowest layer consists of immigrants, all the other people are natives. Here is how the share of immigrants in the total population develops over time:

Share of Immigrants

At first, with more and more immigration, the share of immigrants rises. But after some time, their descendents start to expand the native population, so there is a deceleration until the immigrant share peaks slightly below 40%. Later, when the immigrant population stagnates and the population of their descendents keeps growing (plus the initial native population), the share of immigrants falls off again.

Now immigration of 5% of the initial population is very heavy. Why? As you can see in the above graph, total population grows to more than 12 times its initial size over a century. For a country like the US (circa 320 million in 2015), this would mean that population grows to about 4 billion over a century. Possible, but rather extreme as an assumption.

You might object that for smaller countries it could happen. It surely becomes easier. But take a country like Germany with currently some 81 million inhabitants. Its population would rise to one billion people with this level of immigration. But then population density might work as a limiting factor. Population in Germany is now at 226 per square kilometer (583 per square mile). If it went up by a factor of more than 12, then Germany would have an average population density as the most populated parts of Germany have right now. Or in other words: Germany would become one huge city. Possible, but again pretty extreme. And even then the share of immigrants in the total population would not exceed 40% ever. After a century it would even have fallen to below a quarter of total population. Compare this to the result from the naïve analysis how natives will be only one sixth of total population after a century.

Let’s see how the maximum share of immigrants comes out for other levels of annual immigration, and how far one has to go out to achieve a maximum of 50% at least at the peak. Here’s a graph with the number of immigrants per year in millions on the x-axis (reference population of 100 million), and the maximum share of immigrants on the y-axis:

Towards a Majority

Hence to reach a share of 50% immigrants in the total population (even if only for a short peak after which it falls off again), one would have to have 18 million immigrants each year for an initial population of 100 million. But that implies that total population (even with replacement fertility) will grow to about 45 times its initial size over a century. For the US, this would work out to a population of about 14 billion people, more than total world population according to most projections. And for Germany, it would amount to a population of more than 3.5 billion people. That’s not impossible, but looks rather outlandish as a scenario.

The conclusion from all this is: For all practical purposes, there will never be a majority of immigrants. (I will discuss a few exceptional cases in the appendix, but those do not apply for large countries like the US or Germany. Or you have to make assumptions that would be much worse than swamping .)

Even if you are scared that immigration could become so strong that for a short time immigrants become a majority, all you have to do is introduce a limit on immigration of less than 18 million for an initial population of 100 million. 50 million per year would do for the US, and 14 million for Germany which is orders of magnitude above current levels (below one percent of the population, maybe this year slightly above for Germany).

Now, one objection could be that my definition of immigrants is too narrow, that also second generation immigrants or maybe even third generation immigrants would have to count as immigrants because they stay (partly) foreign. Here is the peak for the share of immigrants, of immigrants + second generation, and of immigrants + second generation + third generation, depending on the number of immigrants per year in millions (reference population 100 million):

Towards Swamping

The blue line is the line I had above for immigrants alone. The red line is for the first two generations together, and the green line for the first three generations together (the peak occurs at a later point in time, so you do not have these shares at the same time). As for the first two generations: they become a majority for about 1.25 million immigrants per year (initial population of 100 million). As for the first three generations, they become a majority for annual immigration of slightly more than 0.6 million immigrants per year.

Of course, it becomes easier and easier to achieve a majority, the more inclusive the definition of “immigrants” becomes. However, it would still only mean a majority at the peak before it falls off again. While a majority for immigrants is almost impossible, it is conceivable for immigrants + second generation, and even more so, if you add the third generation in. Restrictionists are concerned that a majority could change the culture materially or take the country over via the political process. This may sound more plausible if you assume a vast majority of immigrants who are perhaps rather foreign (but also that they are homogeneous or can easily overcome coordination problems). However, that is hardly possible if you have to include the second or even the third generation. It could only happen if you assume very slow assimilation. I will not pursue this here, but will address this point in a further post.

I only discussed the lowest level of “swamping” so far, i.e. that there is a majority of immigrants at some point in time. To get real “swamping”, one would have to have a much higher share of immigrants. If swamping is something like a level of 80%, it is not possible for immigrants alone, or only under totally outlandish assumptions. It is still hard to achieve for the first two generations together because one would have to go to a level of at least 8.5 million immigrants per year (100 million reference population). And even for the first three generations together, one would have to assume 3.5 million immigrants each year for an initial population of 100 million.

As I already noted above: 5 million immigrants each year is a pretty extreme assumption, and even 3.5 million would still mean that total population grows to more than 9.5 times its initial size over a century. For the US, this would amount to more than three billion people. However, here is what the population structure at the peak after 65 years would look like: 31% immigrants, 33% second generation, 17% third generation, and 19% fourth and higher generations plus initial natives and their descendents. Even with moderate assimilation (e.g. a quarter per generation), the effective share of natives (natives in a narrow sense plus the assimilated part of the first three generations) would be a clear majority even in this scenario. As I said, I will leave a more thorough discussion to a further post. But maybe my conclusion is already clear: only with very low assimilation or even reverse assimilation (i.e. of natives to the immigrant culture) can such a swamping scenario play out with very high immigration. Cultural and political results would also presuppose that immigrants are very homogeneous or at least easy to coordinate.

Let me just sum up the main results of this post:

Under broad assumptions, serious swamping by immigrants is practically impossible. A slight majority at the peak presupposes very high levels of immigration and is also hardly possible. For the first two generations to achieve a majority, you still need rather extreme levels of immigration. Maybe you could see a majority for the first three generations together, but then you also have to make an assumption of very slow assimilation and rather homogeneous immigrants to find this concerning. Even moderate assimilation over three generations would mean that the effectively native part of the population remains a clear majority.

Appendix

As I noted above, there are some exceptional cases where something like “swamping” can come to pass. I would like to address them here and also why they are irrelevant for large countries like the US or Germany.

  •  You can have swamping for new settlers on uninhabitated land: there are simply no natives, so the settler culture will prevail by default. This can happen especially in agricultural societies with little need to cooperate with other settlers of a different origin. But then, such a case does not apply for the US or Germany now.
  • A similar case would be after ethnic cleansing: In a first step you drive away the previous population or kill them off, and then you resettle the new land. You can make such an assumption, but then you should be less concerned about swamping and more about  ethnic cleansing and even genocide. And you would have to explain how this is a realistic scenario.
  • Another variant is if immigration exceeds initial native population by orders of magnitude. E.g. there were a few million Native Americans in what it now the US, and then there was immigration of ten times as many people or so. In addition, there was hardly any incentive or opportunity to assimilate to native culture, so also all descendents remained foreign (as viewed by Native Americans). However, immigration of ten times the current population to the US would mean more than 3 billion immigrants. With the momentum effect, this would build up to an additional population of more than 7 billion. Or in other words: after two generations, everybody in the world would be in the US. Possible, but perhaps a little extreme as an assumption. And then there is no reason to believe there would be no incentive or opportunity to assimilate to American culture. Quite the opposite.
  • Small countries (more like city states or smaller) can have very high rates of immigration and hence a high share of immigrants, simply because they are so small and it does not take a lot of immigrants. Examples would be American Samoa (40,000 inhabitants and 71% immigrants) or the Carribean Netherlands (12,000 and 66%). However, note: for this to be sustainable you have to have very fast population growth. An example would be New York City where population in 1900 was more than 50 times population in 1800. But again, that cannot happen for large countries or countries which have some constraint for population density.
  • A funny example, and perhaps the only real example where “swamping” occurs is a country with fertility of 0 and regular immigration. The native population keeps dying out and is being replaced by immigrants. Actually, there is such a country: the Vatican which has 100% immigrants. Strangely enough, no one believes that the culture of the Vatican suffers from this “swamping.”
  • My argument relies on the momentum effect. If it does not apply or only to a lesser degree then the share of immigrants can become larger. There are several cases where this is possible: (1) The country is a destination for pensioners: they won’t have any children and their previous children might not want to join them. This case is similar to the Vatican. (2) Immigrants who are not allowed to bring in their families. This is the typical situation for the Gulf States where the share of immigrants can be very high: UAE with 84% immigrants, Qatar 74%, and Kuweit 70%. However, this is atypical because it depends on temporary immigration which makes concerns over cultural change or a political takeover a moot point. With permanent immigration the above arguments apply. (3) Immigration of the whole population pyramid including older generations. This can happen with refugees who are forced from their homes. An example of a country with a high share of immigrants because of refugees is Jordan with about 40% immigrants. In this case, there is no or only a mild momentum effect. But note: you also need a rather small country and the share will fall from there because it is hard to sustain the necessary levels of immigration over time. (4) A milder variant of this case is if immigrants come later in life or bring more of their older relatives in (but maybe not all of them). This attentuates the momentum effect and can lead to a higher share of immigrants. However, with a fixed absolute number it also means that effective immigration (people of reproductive age) is lower and the eventual level is lower.
  • If you exclude all exceptional cases with little import for large countries (thinly populated territories, city states with a hinterland that is not counted, the Gulf States regime) and focus on larger countries, the highest share for immigrants are in Switzerland with 29% immigrants and Australia with 28% immigrants. Although it might seem that those are rather low shares, according to the above analysis, the share of immigrants is already rather high. And a further increase hence presupposes much higher levels of immigration to approach 40% and 50%.
  • The share of immigrants can be higher with accelerating immigration, e.g. as a fixed percentage of a growing population. However, this means you get exponential growth for the total population instead of linear growth. This makes the situation even less sustainable.
  • You can have “swamping” by immigrants and all their descendents if there is no assimilation because their numbers keep growing and they remain foreign. With reverse assimilation (to the immigrant culture) the effect could be even stronger. An example would be the Roman Empire where there was a strong incentive for people in newly occupied territories to assimilate to the culture of the Roman “immigrants.” Here immigrants were simply conquerors and it was important for the native population to assimilate to their culture. If you assume that your country is occupied and “immigrants” exert a pull towards their culture because they are in positions of power and wealth, you should be concerned about a military occupation in the first place, not swamping.

Miscellaneous Remarks

 

  1. There seems to be something about Daimler and Turkey. Edzard Reuter, predecessor of Dieter Zetsche, was born in Berlin in 1928. Since his father was a well-known Social Democrat (mayor of Berlin from 1948 to 1953), the family had to flee Germany in 1935 and obtained asylum in Turkey where Edzard Reuter grew up from age 7 to 17. As far as I know he is fluent in Turkish. So you would have to count him as an immigrant from Turkey. Possibly that was his experience in 1945 although he, of course, also had a strong connection with Germany through his family.
  2. If you insist on the share of the foreign-born and not just immigrants who grew up elsewhere, you would have to include the children brought along by immigrants. With my standard assumptions, an immigrant at age 25 brings 0.22 children along. So you would have to increase all numbers by about 22%. But then your assumption is that someone’s birthplace has a deep influence on their development independent of where they grow up or who their parents are. If you think that the environment you grow up in is the most important aspect, then you would end up with my definition (up to small adjustments). And if you think that the important aspect is that parents influence their children, then you would have to look at immigrants and all their children, no matter where they were born. If you think both play a role, you have to take something in between. Classification as “foreign-born” has perhaps more to do with the fact that it is comparably easy to track someone’s birth place versus where they grew up most of the time or what group their parents belong to.
  3. “Swamping” is a vague concept, and it can mean different things to different people. One other sense might be that population in a country rises a lot, and that could have negative consequences. My arguments make such a scenario more probable because they show that immigration leads to more growth than the sheer number of immigrants alone. I can’t have it both ways: If open borders means that many people have a chance to move to rich countries, then the population in rich countries will have to rise. And if a transfer of many people is optimal, then population will have to rise considerably. Assimilation to rather low native fertility in rich countries, mostly below replacement, might mitigate the effect, though, but only over a longer timeframe.
  4. Impeding family reunion works somewhat like the immigration regime in the Gulf States: either children stay in the source country and so immigrants can become a larger share of the total population. Or children immigrate only after they have (partly) grown up in another country and so would have to count as immigrants, too. Keeping children out means that they will not grow up as natives. Since these are the same people, eventually numbers are the same, so such restrictions can only slow the initial build-up down, but do not change the end result. Likewise for bringing in parents and grandparents. They will not change the end result because they will not have an impact on further development.
  5. One assumption that might look like a trick is that I work with replacement fertility. Maybe this is counterintuitive for some, but higher fertility of immigrants makes it even harder for immigrants to become a majority, let alone “swamp” the native population. Since there are now more children and even more grandchildren, immigrants themselves make up a lower share. So if you are concerned about swamping you would have to applaud high fertility. It also tilts the distribution towards those who have been longer in the country and hence are more assimilated.
  6. One other conclusion from the discussion is that every new cohort of immigrants comes to a country that is overwhelmingly native in culture. There is also a strong incentive to assimilate. So there is hardly a chance that native culture will be replaced by some other culture. This is even more so because immigrants are not a homogenous population. Hence it is very plausible that native culture will serve as a lingua franca for various groups of immigrants. This contradicts Nathan Smith’s vision of a country where there are huge masses of people who are not part of native culture (apart from that, I think Nathan Smith also misses the momentum effect and hence his scenario is also implausible in other ways, I will get back to that).

Related reading

Hansjörg is a mathematician by training with a doctorate from the University of Bonn, Germany. After a year at Stanford University as a guest scientist, he went on to work in the financial sector and managed corporate bond funds. Currently, he is building his publishing company Libera Media.

See our blog post introducing Hansjörg, or all blog posts by Hansjörg.

15 thoughts on “Swamping by Immigrants is Hardly Possible”

  1. This is a totally bogus assumption and essay. It is, in fact, untrue. Mexicans-Hispanics will become the new majority in the USA by 2042.”Any culture that will not defend itself against displacement through mass immigration faces extinction. That includes both time-tested and successful cultures. Embracing diversity results in cultural suicide. America’s multicultural path guarantees its destruction via cultural clashes and conflict with Islam, Mexican and African cultures that diametrically oppose American culture. The more diverse a country, the more destructive and broken-down its future. The more people, the more it destroys its quality of life and standard of living. The more it adds immigrants, the more destruction to its environment. The more it imports refugees, the faster America, Canada, Europe and Australia lose their own ability to function and worse, their identities. Exponential growth of any civilization leads to ultimate collapse. You see it in Africa, India and China today. You will see it in Europe, Canada, Australia and America in the coming years, “IF” Western countries don’t stop all forms of immigration.“ Frosty Wooldridge, 6 continent world bicycle traveler, witness to what’s coming to Western countries as to endless refugee immigration.

    Ask the American Indians if they didn’t become displaced by the immigrants. The whites completely took over North America and now, the Native Americans are vanquished to internment camps called “reservations.”

  2. I think I have addressed your points in my post, at least those that are related to its content:

    – I take the word “immigrant” seriously and only refer to those that actually immigrate (and grew up in another country). “Hispanics” are mostly not immigrants in this sense, but natives (i.e. people born in the country or who mostly grew up there).
    – If you look at all descendents of immigrants, it is certainly possible that they become a majority over time. I discuss the case for the first three generations, and note that it is in reach for the first three generations with immigration that is not particularly extreme. As you can see in the second chart, the population of all descendents keeps growing. If it grows faster than the rest of the population, then it will become a majority at some point in time. But note: that might take long, more like a century or more. My intuition of swamping is that it is like a flood and you are overwhelmed in a short time. If that is so, then “swamping” for something that takes more than a century is perhaps a misnomer.
    – I explicitly address the case of Native Americans in the appendix.
    – I also address the other meanings someone might attach to the word “swamping,” and I don’t rule out that in another sense it could happen. But then this is not what my argument is about.

    Your claim about diversity is not correct in the context of this post. The more diverse the immigrant population, the harder it becomes for any one group to become a majority. You may see other problems with diversity, but this is not one of them.

    1. Yes, I did cover immigration’s worst aspect: the third world continues to add 80 million net gain, annually. Thus, no end to the line. Thus, immigration will overrun any country in its path. To write otherwise remains out of touch with reality. I’ve traveled across the globe on my bicycle for 40 years. No case for open borders stands the test of math and common sense. No first world country can withstand or sustain the sheer numbers.

      “Any culture that will not defend itself against displacement through mass immigration faces extinction. That includes both time-tested and successful cultures. Embracing diversity results in cultural suicide. America’s multicultural path guarantees its destruction via cultural clashes and conflict with Islam, Mexican and African cultures that diametrically oppose American culture. The more diverse a country, the more destructive and broken-down its future. The more people, the more it destroys its quality of life and standard of living. The more it adds immigrants, the more destruction to its environment. The more it imports refugees, the faster America, Canada, Europe and Australia lose their own ability to function and worse, their identities. Exponential growth of any civilization leads to ultimate collapse. You see it in Africa, India and China today. You will see it in Europe, Canada, Australia and America in the coming years, “IF” Western countries don’t stop all forms of immigration.“ Frosty Wooldridge, 6 continent world bicycle traveler, witness to what’s coming to Western countries as to endless refugee immigration.

      1. You should really read my previous post “Misinterpreting Growth of Immigrant Populations” which deals with population momentum. One conclusion is that to _transfer_ 80 million people from the third to the first world, you only need about 30 million actual immigrants. That’s about 3% of current population in the first world. As a comparison: New York City could cope with more than 4% annual population growth from 1800 to 1900.

        So 3% immigration of initial population would mean that population growth in the third world comes to a standstill. Over 33 years, population in the first world doubles, so immigration as a percentage of population falls to 1.5%. You could now ramp it up to 3% again which then means 60 million immigrants. At this point population in the third world would start to shrink. As it shrinks also population surplus goes down. After another 33 years population in the first world has again doubled, and you can start all over, etc.

        At some point, the third world cannot provide all the emigrants to fill the 3% of first world population that are allowed to immigrate. At that point you effectively have open borders because anyone who wants to emigrate is able to immigrate (subject to a few constraints perhaps: contagious diseases, terrorists, etc.).

        There are also other schemes how to get to open borders. Actually, you need even less than the 3% in my example, something like 1% should be enough. It only takes longer. And you could index immigration to population so it keeps pace with a growing population instead of first falling and then being ramped up again.

        1. That’s funny, I made a mistake and left population momentum out: It does not take 33 years for a doubling of first world population. More like 20 years.

          And population growth is faster than for NYC for the same reason.

          1. You cannot defend open borders for any rational reason whatsoever. Western countries maintain replacement of two children per woman, but third world women add 80 million net gain annually. It’s not sustainable whatsoever and immigrating them into first world countries cannot be sustained whatsoever. You’re arguing against math and you cannot argue against math. It’s the numbers. It’s also about destroying our biosphere at an accelerating rate of speed as immigrants jump their water footprint, energy footprint, ecological footprint beyond the carrying capacity of this planet.

            Mother Earth Weeps Over Species Extinction: Human Population Onslaught
            By Frosty Wooldridge

            Oxford University biologist Norman Myers reported that humanity causes the “Sixth Extinction Session” accelerating throughout the animal kingdom. Climate changes, meteors, ice ages and massive burns created the first five mass extinction sessions. Myers worked for decades in the rain forests worldwide to come up with a figure of 100 species facing extinction every day of the year. (Source: Oxford University Study, worldwide extinction rates.)

            “Upwards of one hundred species.. mostly of the large, slow-breeding variety.. are becoming extinct here every day because more and more of the earth’s carrying capacity is systematically being converted into human carrying capacity. These species are being burnt out, starved out, and squeezed out of existence.. thanks to technologies that most people, I’m afraid, think of as technologies of peace. I hope it will not be too long before the technologies that support our population explosion begin to be perceived as no less hazardous to the future of life on this planet than the endless production of radioactive wastes.” Daniel Quinn
            Notwithstanding, the human race adds 80 million, net gain, annually.

            Humans grow like a hungry mob of demons devouring everything in their path. If it’s the last black rhino in Africa, humans poach it to extinction for the last trophy horns on someone’s mantle. If it’s Cecil the lion, a dentist extinguishes its life for a “victory” picture on his fireplace. If it’s the monarch butterflies of California now extinguished by 90 percent in 20 years, Monsanto continues selling “Roundup weed killer” to make certain monarchs never fly again. Humans kill 100,000,000 (million) sharks in the oceans every year, decade in and decade out.

            Countries don’t care, their leaders don’t care, religious leaders don’t care, and in fact, nobody cares.But everybody loses the essence of Mother Earth.At some point, when the grizzly vanishes, the humpback whale sings its last song or the hummingbird makes its last flower run—the human race will pave its roads into the last of the silence. Mother Earth weeps for its children.

            Frosty Wooldridge, six continent world bicycle traveler.

            1. Actually, if immigrants and their descendents converge to much lower fertility in the first world, world population will grow more slowly or even shrink at some point. So you should be in favor of transferring many people from the third to the first world. If there are no arguments from your side, I interpret it as approval. (No, CONTROL-V does not count as an argument.)

              1. It’s difficult to reason with people who cannot use reason, cannot use mathematical reality, cannot understand sustainability, cannot understand humanity’s dilemma. In the end, Mother Nature will correct all of our problems–not open borders immigration. Europe will be the first to fall into anarchy and chaos. Once oil vanishes within this century, all bets are off as to humanity’s viability as a species. We face mass human die-off. Open borders will bring it on faster.

                1. I think you have made your worldview clear by now. I only wonder what all this has to do with my post. Even if I agreed with you on every single point, it would not change my conclusions as far as I can see.

  3. Frosty, Rather than engage is a long debate today, as I formerly did several times, I just want to know if you ever took my prior suggestion from about five years ago and read Julian Simon. I think even more than the statistical argument, I would hope you first re-think how valuable each individual person is and the many benefits we derive from others. Regardless of their race, ethnicity or prior geographical birthplace, when we engage in voluntary exchange history actually shows trade as a great incentive for peace, innovation and productivity. I caught you on Coast to Coast several weeks ago and was disappointed you are still so negative on humans who are slightly different than you are. It is your basic premise with which I disagree. PS: When native peoples were annihilated, it was not because the “immigrants” were immigrants, but because they assumed they were superior and all others were inferior.

    1. Lynn, yes, I am on coast to coast with the facts, the realities and the math to prove it. It’s negative, it’s reality. We are overpopulated and we either reduce our numbers or Mother Nature will do it for us. You suffer from “cognitive dissonance” which is an intellectual denial of reality.

      Nobel Laureate Dr. Henry W. Kendall said, “If we don’t halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature, brutally and without pity – and will leave a ravaged world.”

      “The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct. To say, as many do, that the difficulties of nations are not due to people, but to poor ideology and land-use management is sophistic.” Harvard scholar and biologist E.O. Wilson

      “Unlimited population growth cannot be sustained; you cannot sustain growth in the rates of consumption of resources. No species can overrun the carrying capacity of a finite land mass. This Law cannot be repealed and is not negotiable.” Dr. Albert Bartlett, http://www.albartlett.org , University of Colorado, USA.

      “Most Western elites continue urging the wealthy West not to stem the migrant tide [that adds 80 million net gain annually to the planet], but to absorb our global brothers and sisters until their horrid ordeal has been endured and shared by all—ten billion humans packed onto an ecologically devastated planet.” Dr. Otis Graham, Unguarded Gates

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