About immigration

Control of Immigration is possibly the paramount political issue of today. It effects our quality of life, our environment and our long-term sustainability, and yet many, including the author of this page, in anglophone nations — Australia, Canada and the United States — have been morally blackmailed into silence on this issue for decades.

It has been put to the author a number of times in the past that if our societies were to tolerate open discussion of the issue of population, let alone immigration, that it would automatically open a Pandora's box of racist xenophobia. In turn, it was said that this would lead to the splitting of the Australian working class along racial lines and the emergence of a mass fascist movement, against which the divided Australian working class would be powerless to resist.

It was implicitly held that anyone who questioned immigration could only have been driven to do so consequence of a deep inner flaw of racism. Hence, it was understood as the moral duty of all true humanitarians to denounce and shame mercilessly anyone who, by questioning immigration, revealed symptoms of this flaw. As a result, on one occasion in the early 1980's, the author witnessed a close friend and a member of a far left organisation who once, as a result of having suggested that Geoffrey Blainey was probably right on the question off immigration, denounced so savagely by another friend (the author's then partner) that he recanted soon after and never dared raise the topic again in my presence while he was alive. Earlier, in 1978, on an occasion in which the author, himself, in the presence of two other socialists, suggested that immigrants fleeing from communist Vietnam were more likely to be right wing_#main-fn1">1, he was himself denounced as racist. It was as a result of these sorts of experiences which led the author himself to keep his own serious misgivings about immigration largely to himself for many ensuing years.

It is emotionally far easier to extend a welcoming had to everyone in the world who wishes to come here than to try to prevent them from coming. Because of this, it is easy for proponents of immigration to depict themselves as having compassion and a social conscience and their opponents as selfish. In fact the reverse is far more often the case. The principle drivers of immigration, that is the growth lobby, comprised of land speculators and property developers and industries closely related such as banks and building materials manufacturers, are not driven by altruism, but rather, greed. Even though population growth must necessarily, on average lower the access of each individual member of their own national community to land and other natural resources and hence lower his/her standard of living, the growth lobby are, paradoxically, able to enrich themselves through this process. They enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of the national community and, indeed, the international community by using immigration to increase the demand for the commodity which they monopolise, namely land, and to provide them with customers who have acquired wealth from other countries.

Ostensibly left wing proponents of immigration, if they don't gain directly through immigration, are often demographically shielded from immigration by having occupations which are less threatened by immigration. Whilst they would have us believe that they are motivated by compassion for fellow human beings in poor countries, that compassion can only ever extend, in practice, to a small, almost insignificant, minority in those countries. Unless the numbers allowed to immigrate are increased to truly ridiculous proportions, the number of beneficiaries can only ever be a small. For the vast majority necessarily left behind, there can be no hope of becoming members of our comparatively more affluent society. Moreover, the additional demands made upon poor countries for resources by the increased populations of more affluent countries is more likely to increase, rather than reduce, their poverty.

Furthermore, the ostensibly left-wing proponents of immigration seem to have forgotten that charity should begin at home. By supporting high immigration, they have directly help cause the impoverishment of a good many of their poorer fellow citizens, principally through population-driven housing hyper-inflation, but also through the downward pressure that higher numbers of workers place on wages, or in the case of industries such as IT industry, their outright replacement .

Much of the content of this section of candobetter.org will be considered 'politically incorrect' by may of the 'bleeding heart' left-liberal creed, which, to some extent, even the author, himself, still identifies with. However, as much of the other content of this site does demonstrate practical concern for the fate of people from poorer third world countries such as in Iraq and Bolivia, to give two examples, we would hold that opposition to immigration is not altogether inconsistent with internationalism.

See also Immigration links, population

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. Years later — my best estimate of the date is probably the early 1990's — I read a story of how activists from the Vietnam Moratorium movement planned to hold a re-union dinner in one of the Melbourne municipal town halls. As it happened, many of the local community and some of the Councillors were right-wing Vietnamese and when they learned of the planned dinner they loudly objected. Sadly, the former Vietnam Moratorium activists backed down and held their re-union dinner elsewhere. WhiIst I don't know of all the circumstances, it strikes me as an outrage that, just because an immigrant group happened to have supported a murderous destructive war against the majority of their own countrymen and countrywomen, they should presume to have the right to push around people who opposed that war in their host country, especially given that that view was shared by the majority in that host country.#main-fn1-txt">[back]

Some Key Documents

Is it reactionary to oppose Immigration? 16 Dec 08 - also on Web Diary

Closing our borders can't mean turning our backs 25 Oct 07

American Unions and their about-face on Immigration 30 Sep 07

Book Review: Immigrants: your country needs them by Philippe Legrain 4 Oct 07

An immigration policy bought and paid for? 24 Feb 08

Bush's legacy 15 Oct 07

Triad of ecological ruin - The Royal Bank of Canada, Nature Conservancy and the Multicultural Industry 23 Jan 08

How does Chinese treatment of Tibet differ from treatment of native born Canadians?1 Apr 08

Which is the most idiotic Green Party in the world? 2 Feb 08

Iceland, the most peaceful country on earth 21 May 08

How illegal immigration into the US harms poor US Hispanic citizens 9 Oct 07