immigration

This was posted to an online discussion concerning the dramatic increase in the rate of immigration to this country at larvatusprodeo.net.

Here are some articles which show how the increase in population of recent years has demonstrably degraded the quality of life of most Australians (and also residents of some overseas countries) in recent years:

Redland City to pay with increased water charges for population growth, Shared accommodation a necessity and no longer a choice for many in Brisbane, How to end the Queensland economy's addiction to population growth?, Working man's vegetable plot under attack again, Exhibition documents erosion of childhood by overdevelopment and overpopulation, Channel 7 markets unlivable Melbourne to a helpless audience, Courier-Mail beats up on public for complaining about cost of 'progress', Rent gouging threatens Brisbane inner city retail community, How illegal immigration into the US harms poor US Hispanic citizens and More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland.

In regard to the supposed economic benefits of immigration, a House of Lords Committee recently demolished the economic case for immigration (see House of lords tells UK government to limit immigration and the original article in the UK's Telegraph newspaper). The British Optimum Population Trust, whilst welcoming the stance by the House of Lords committee, pointed out that the report understated the environmental damage caused by immigration-driven population growth (See House of Lords’ immigration report ‘forgets environment’).

In Australia in January 2006 the Productivity Commission found very little economic benefit from immigration. In fact, it actually showed that that GDP would rise slightly whilst average hours worked would rise proportionally even more. So, in most peoples' understanding, even defined in extremely narrow economic terms, we would be worse off rather than marginally better off as a result of immigration. And then, let's not forget that GDP is an utterly stupid way to measure our prosperity in the first place. As anyone, more economically literate than the Productivity Commission should know, and as John Coulter, National President of Sustainable Population Australiareminded us in a media release (pdf) of 19 January 2006:

“Both GNP and GDP count many costs as benefits adding them to the index rather than subtracting them. The report draws attention to the increased population adding to congestion and pollution but fails to recognise that the costs of ameliorating these adverse effects will appear in the national accounts as additions to, rather than subtractions from, GNP and GDP.”

Incidentally, this Productivity Commission Report is the straw that the Australian seized upon in order to dismiss objections to increased immigration in its editorial More workers are a positive force of 19 May.

Does anyone here still seriously maintain that having millions more people here to help us dig up and export more of our non-renewable mineral resources in order to help China further pollute its own environment and melt the polar ice caps, will help make this country a better place to live, even in the short term?

In 1942 with a population of only 7 million, Australia was one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth as Andrew Ross showed in Armed and Ready - The Industrial Development and Defence of Australia 1900-1945, 1995, Turton and Armstrong (see The myth of the Howard Government's defence competence). Increasing our population has directly correlated with this country losing its technological edge over other countries So, let's, for once and for all bury the lie that population growth is necessary for economic prosperity.

Because we have surpassed what is this country's optimum population size, increasing population actually results in dis-economies of scale rather than the economies of scale that pro-growth economists promised us. As the population density becomes greater it actually costs more per person to build all the necessary roads, footpaths, traffic lights, noise barriers, electricity substations, power lines, water pipes, hospitals, schools, etc., etc. That is one reason why our water rates, council rates and electricity charges are rising. Has anyone contemplated that this may be one reason why it is so difficult for governments to fund road building these days without resort to tolls?

What population growth does―and what common sense and intuition should have long ago warned us, in spite of the claptrap peddled by economists in the pay of land speculators and property developers―is decrease the amount of natural resources available to each of us. Consequently, the demands that each of us make on this largely arid and infertile land are increased. That is the principle driver of soil salinity, land erosion, and the threatened loss of the Murray Darling river system. To add to the these demands upon our continent by adding more human inhabitants, before the existing problems are solved, is environmental recklessness.

Labor Senator-elect Doug Cameron is the only Federal politician, so far, to have summoned up the courage to raise a critical voice against the Government's recently announced plans to raise the annual immigration level to 300,000. For this, he has earned the wrath of The Australian newspaper.

An editorial Closing the shop of 21 May 08 did not even attempt to dispute Cameron's warning that immigration will depress the wages of Australian workers, rather, it welcomed the prospect:

Mr Cameron's worries about migration most likely stem from fears that accepting unskilled workers from the Pacific islands and elsewhere will put downward pressure on wages for union members.

His comments reflect the fact that unskilled migration may be used to offset the inflationary impact of scrapping the Howard government's Work Choices legislation.

Those who have followed The Australian's pushing of the immigration barrow in recent days will know that, in the moral Universe inhabited by News Limited, the only right and proper end, towards which any responsible Labor government can work, is not towards controlling housing hyper-inflation, rising water and electricity charges, council rates and—all driven by population growth—but rather towards controlling 'wages inflation'. Because the Rudd government has been so enormously generous to unionists in having scrapped aspects of Howard's "Work Choices" legislation, they are now beholden to unquestioningly accept whatever other means the Rudd government decides to use in its place to erode their standard of living, including the raising of immigration levels.

The editorial raises the familiar spectres of xenophobia and the White Australia policy in order to place itself indisputably on the high moral ground:

… the immigration debate has already pricked the raw nerves of xenophobia and self interest that lie just below the surface of many within the labour movement. …

It is a rerun of the views that underpinned the ALP's support for the discredited White Australia policy, which grew out of a deal between labour and capital to protect Australian jobs from Chinese immigration.

Of course The Australian's editorial writers, who clamoured to have this country join the war to seize Iraq's oil assets, is, in contrast to ‘self interested’ Australian workers, fearful of their living standards being destroyed by the further crowding of this country, are acting only out of pure altruism and love for for their fellow human beings.

Mr Cameron's comments are held to be “proof that the extreme Left and extreme Right arms of politics join hands around the back.”

It is not known whether Doug Cameron, himself, would accept The Australian's labelling of him as ‘extreme Left’. In any case, this ignores the fact that most of the Australian far left are in agreement with The Australian's support for high immigration. For decades, anyone on the on the Australian far left who would have dared question immigration in the way that Doug Cameron is now doing would have found themselves very quickly ostracised. Members of the wider community opposed to population growth also encounter irrational opposition. #harrassment" id="harrassment">For instance, the Victorian branch of Sustainable Population Australia encountered a demonstration outside Prosper Australia and members were publicly defamed and threatened with violence by members of the Socialist Alliance and others in 2004 until they ceased to associate there.

It is to be hoped that Doug Cameron will stand up to the Murdoch newsmedia and resist the pressure to become corralled with all of his fellow Labor Parliamentarians into supporting Chris Evans' high immigration program.

See also Doug Cameron: guest workers threaten Australian wages and conditions of 20 May 08, Is it reactionary to oppose Immigration? of 16 Dec 07 (also on Web Diary)

Being half-Icelandic in background I'd like to believe in intrinsic Norse wisdom but …

1. The reason my great grandfather's trade (carpenter) was so revered was because Icelanders deforested their country (like the English).
2. Icelanders are worse than Kiwis for being travellers. They are dumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in their constant trips to hot climes.
3. They still think its their cultural right to hunt endangered whales.
4. I think they are building or have built with big corporate dough a smelter with terrible implications for the atmosphere.

They are a wealthy people, but they pay a big price for that. As Scandinavians, they simply out-work most of the human race. A CBC documentary compared the Newfoundland economy with that of Iceland and really couldn't come up with anything much more than the fact that Celts are lazy drunks and Icelanders are hard working drunks. Work hard, Play Hard. Their hygiene and housekeeping standards reflect that too.

Both Newfoundland and Iceland are big islands dependant on fishery except now the Newfies have oil money to help. But the difference is that the Icelanders know that if they don't work hard, they starve, with no one to bail them out.

Newfies have been able to rely on constant welfare inputs from Ottawa and took on an Aboriginal work ethic. Whole joke books have been published exploiting that character trait. Except it is PC to tell Newfie jokes (the jokes are published in Newfoundland) but First Nations jokes are off-side. With the Alberta oil economy to lure them out, this welfare culture, five decades old, is disappearing.

Now Newfoundland and Iceland are both beginning to resemble each other more, especially in their disregard of the environment.

Other interesting parallels, both cultures, Celtic and Norse, place a huge value on literary accomplishments, writers and poets are highly esteemed and political debate is a pastime. Both societies boast a tradition of feisty women, but Icelandic women are actually more independent because they broke free of the church. They go on strike once a year and shut the whole country down to prove their importance to the economy.

Because it has always been a socialized welfare state with free health, education, employment and child care benefits and total female employment participation, taxes are sky high and inflation as well. This latter fact is something you should reflect upon. Because double-digit inflation discourages savings so much—in fact it makes it nonsensical to put aside anything—people are encouraged to be hyper-consumers.

They run out and buy things and blow everything they have on cars, clothes and trips. Live for today has always been the motto. So being seen in fancy clothes in a smart car and in a well-furnished apartment becomes a cultural requirement. I would be looked upon as a hillbilly. Also the pressure to work long hours at two jobs—not an Icelandic phenomena exclusively obviously—just to get the money to pay the huge rent and grocery bills ($5 for a lettuce) creates the stress that makes young people and everyone turn to alcoholism big time.

Promiscuous sex is also a cultural trademark with all its emotional and physical costs. It is like when socialist Gunnar Myrdal was criticizing the Swedish welfare state. Whatever model of society we design, whatever set of problems we solve, a new set arises with the better model. There are always trade-offs. But somehow the grass is always greener in other countries.

BTW, my mother's cousin, Helgi Seljun was a Communist deputy (Peoples Party) deputy in the Icelandic parliament. There were 7 parties at the time and I think 5 of them were left of centre. Today there would be a very interesting coalition I'm sure. The president I believe is still a woman whom I saw in Vancouver about a decade ago I think.

One positive statement I would like to make about the land of my mother—and obviously don't circulate this—is that they have always pursued true National Socialist_#main-fn1">1 objectives. They know they are keepers of a precious culture that is 1200 years old and have no right to let that be absorbed or diluted by the influx of other cultures.

As matter of fact, whenever a foreign word invades the language, a special government commission replaces that word with a Norse neologism. Anyone who becomes an Icelandic citizen through marriage must change his or her name to old Norse names. Thus the language spoken today would have been entirely intelligible to Eric the Red a millenia ago, and he could have read the Icelandic Bible that sits in my living room.

Icelandic libraries are full of Norse sagas, poems, ghost stories and debates. The food they eat is second to none. Fish and lamb and all the deserts my grandmother made for me, and coffee made like no one else did. Only you hold the sugar cubes in your tongue when you drink it. Point being, there is nothing “deficient” in Icelandic culture that needs “enrichment” from the immigration of other cultures that would threaten it and also rob the people of their irreplaceable low-density living.

Tim Murray, 27 Dec 2007
Quadra Island, British Columbia, Canada

See also The Australian's April fool's joke

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1.#main-fn1-txt">↑ This means ‘national socialist’ in the earlier sense, which pre-dated the appropriation of that term in the 1920's by Hitler's National Socialist (Nazi) Party.

In 2007 the Queensland Government forcibly acquired the water assets of South East Queensland local governments. Because local governments are not recognised under Australia's constitution they are totally subject to the whim of their respective state governments. That is why the Queensland government was also able to forcibly amalgamate many local governments in 2007 against their objections and the objections of their the constituents_#main-fn1">1. Having lost control of their water assets, the residents in these areas have now found that they now face hikes in their water bills.

As Redland City Mayor Melva Hobbs explained in a media release of 14 May_#main-fn2">2 Redland Shire will now have to buy bulk water from the Queensland Government at prices significantly higher than what it now costs council to produce it. Redland Council plans to meet with the state Government in order to have the bulk water pricing regime reviewed. Bob Abbot the Mayor of the Sunshine Coast, another affected council has noted that his constituents will be effectively paying more rates so that water can be taken out of their regions to meet the water needs of other regions, principally Brisbane, which do not have enough water to cater for their own needs_#main-fn3">3.

The principle reason for the price rises is the cost of construction of a water grid to cater for the increased population largely caused by the Queensland Government. Today's newspapers are full of stories about further blowouts_#main-fn4">4 of the grid. These blowouts are due to factors, such as rising costs of petroleum and other materials, the economic crisis and the higher cost of credit, all of which should have been anticipated. It would seem that Queensland Premier Anna Bligh's past self-congratulation at the Queensland government's claimed progress in the construction of its water grid was premature_#main-fn5">5.

Whilst the Queensland state government and the Federal Government continue to recklessly encourage the population growth that is driving up water costs, Redland City, for its part is prudently attempting to slow it down.

The new Redland City Council was elected on 15 March on a platform of opposition to the breakneck pace of development of the previous Seccombe administration. It has moved quickly to reverse those pro-developer pro-growth policies. The Bayside Bulletin of 28 April 2008 reports_#main-fn6">6 that the new Mayor Melva Hobson plans to withdraw the council's draft planning strategy agreed to by the Seccombe administration which was to cater for an additional 55,000 new residents over the next 20 years, with a population of 188,000 in 2026.

Neverthless, as positive a development as this is, a few local Councils, on their own cannot hope to indefinitely stem the tide of population growth. If this is to happen, the Australian community will have to force the Federal Labor Government to re-think it's plans to increase our anual immigration intake to 300,000

See also: Water prices to surge of 19 June 08 in the Bayside Bulletin, The Australian's April fool's joke of 20 May, More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland of 13 May 08, The Australian laments outcome of Queensland local government elections of 29 Mar 08, Water prices to soar of 15 May 2008

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ See also No Forced Amalgamations

#main-fn2" id="main-fn2">2. #main-fn2-txt">↑ See media release of 14 May downloadable as pdf file linked to from the Media Room of May 2008

#main-fn3" id="main-fn3">3. #main-fn3-txt">↑ See also More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland of 13 May 08

#main-fn4" id="main-fn4">4. #main-fn4-txt">↑ See Water projects' $2.4b blowout in the Courier Mail, Water bills on the rise to pay for Queensland's $9bn grid in The Australian,

#main-fn5" id="main-fn5">5. #main-fn5-txt">↑ I can't cite the sources, but I have somewhere newspaper clippings of Anna Bligh congratulating herself and her Government on the progress of the construction of water grids in recent months. She anticipated being able to sell the Queensland Government's expertise in this field to other governments, presumably governments who had also created problems of overpopulation in the first place to be ‘solved’ with water grids.

#main-fn6" id="main-fn6">6. #main-fn6-txt">↑ State steps back on figures in the Bayside Bulletin of 28 Apr 08

In the article "Bring in the Chinese", of 14 May in The Australian newspaper Robert Leeson proposed what would effectively be an apartheid system involving imported chinese labourers. These workers are said to be needed to build necessary additional infrastructure. This infrastructure would enable Australia to help China further pollute its environment and fuel global warming with our mineral exports.

This article is yet another addition to the almost deafening crescendo preaching the necessity of yet more immigrant labour.

Chinese companies are expected to soon be awarded contracts to build some of the planned infrastructure, but to do this, Leeson argues, they will need to import Chinese labor as happened with the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, which was built by Chinese capital and labour.

If this is not done, he implies, an economic opportunity for Australia will be lost.

Leeson proposes a number of conditions to be met which he would have us believe answer all possible objections to the scheme:

1. the projects must be subject to rigorous cost-benefit analyses;
2. the contract winners might have to provide their own infrastructure (temporary accommodation etc);
3. the winning tenders would have to abide by Australian health and safety standards;
4. the tenders would have to include an incentive mechanism that would minimise the chances of imported workers overstaying their contract (for example, partial payment in the country of origin);
5. the trade union movement would have to be persuaded that these arrangements were temporary responses to full employment, rather than a permanent source of competition to their members. Former ACTU president, Simon Crean is ideally placed to "perform an ... educational role with respect to infrastructure".

What Leeson is proposing effectively amounts to an apartheid system in the same way that 'immigrant' black workers from bantustans within South Africa once provided cheap labour for South Africa's mines and factories. However, if Leeson's plan fails, then it is not hard to imagine how this could lead to an effective invasion of parts of Australia. In the event of any future conflict with China, having such large numbers of foreign citizens on our own soil, would well pose a serious threat to our national security. An alarming statistic provided by this article, is that there are currently 150 million internal migrants in China, enough to overwhelm the current Australian population many times over. (Of course, because we are mostly Europeans and not Tibetans, drawing attention to this fact practically guarantees that this country's opinion-moulders will dismiss objections to Leeson's scheme as coming from an old troglodyte "yellow peril" school of thought.)

Solutions to the claimed labour shortage problem, other than that proposed by Leeson, could include:

• simply leave the raw materials in the ground, at least until such time as the necessary labour from within Australia can be found, or
• if we must dig up all of our minerals now then cut back on immigration and use the labour freed up from building the necessary houses to instead build the additional infrastructure. Another area of the economy which could be wound back is tourism.

However we eventually solve Australia's supposed economic difficulties, a calm discussion, in which all possible options are rationally considered taking into account all the environmental, social, economic and geo-political factors, will first be necessary.

See "Bring in the Chinese" 14 May 08 by Robert Leeson.

The ABC reports that the Rudd Government has ordered a review of the 457 visa scheme for foreign workers.

The same report cites Heather Ridout of the Australian Industries Group warning against any action that might ‘stem the flow’ of workers to Australia.

Meanwhile, Jewel Topsfield of The Age reported yesterday that the number of 457 visas granted has jumped from 39,500 in 2003-04 to more than 100,000 in 2007-08.

Sounds like - far from being stemmed - the flow has become a flood.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) is running a campaign (see also below) on its web site against the abuse of 457 visas and points out the corrosive effect that the scheme is having on the employment of apprentices in Australia. It strikes me that whatever the causes of Australia’s skills crisis at present, one sure way of making it worse is to make it easier to engage skilled tradespeople from overseas as an alternative to taking on apprentices.

Anyone concerned about the effect that 457 visas are having on Australia's local skills base could do worse than to support the AMWU’s initiative (see below).

Stephen Hazell,
Executive Director
Sierra Club of Canada
April 28/08

Mr. Hazell,

In your latest solicitation you enumerate the number of results that Sierra Club volunteers and staff have achieved this year owing to my support. You mention postponing the Kearl tar sands mine pending environmental impact assessment (climate change). You mention stopping the Digby Neck mega-quarry in Nova Scotia that would have proved harmful to right whales. You say you convinced the federal government to develop a new water strategy. You kept global warming at the top of the agenda by advocating "strong" action at Bali and providing needed criticism and analysis of the Harper governments (non) actions following this up. And then you successfully urged the Ontario government to "Grow the Greenbelt" and protect millions of acres of "environmentally sensitive" and "agricultural land" in Southern Ontario.

It sounds like, Mr. Hazell, that you and your team have been busy. Busy like a hyperactive janitor mopping a floor but ignoring that the tap is left wide open to continuously pour water over your work.

Do you remember the IPAT equation? Probably not, I suspect you were not even born in 1970 when the Sierra Club and the whole mainstream environmental movement accepted it as conventional wisdom. "I" (Environmental Impact) equals "P" (Population level) times A (Affluence or per capita consumption) times "T" (technology). Still makes sense to me. But no longer to the politically correct, who have taken the "P" right out to render environmental degradation incomprehensible.

Let's illustrate. We will have to cut global GHG emissions 60% just to make up for the increased emissions brought about by population increases globally in the next four decades. In Australia the population increased 30% from 1990-2006 and its GHG emissions increased by exactly the same number during that same period. In the United States, the population increased 43% from 1970 to 2004 and its GHG emissions increased 43% during that same period. The correlation is clear, is it not? Yet Sierra Club "analysts" in commenting on the governments emissions targets failed to even note Canada's immigrant-driven G-8 leading runaway population growth of 1.08%. Just as they were completely silent following the release of the March 07 census report. A stunning omission for an "environmental" organization.

Environment Minister Gordon Miller said that Southern Ontario can expect to have to jam another 6 million people into its agricultural region in the next 25 years if immigration rates are not curbed. And you want to "Grow the Greenbelt". How? "Smart Growth?" (Smart growth, Smart clear-cuts, Smart extinctions etc.) Check out what is happening to British Greenbelts, once 14% of the UK, now crumbling under development pressure. If Portland Oregon went down, anything will. There is no sanctuary from relentless population and economic growth. Renewable technologies? The energy produced by the 900 wind farm at Sarnia will be erased by the energy demands of 23 days of immigration. BC Hydro claims that if every British Columbian household turned their lights off for one hour it would provide enough power for 4000 households for a year. But the population growth rate in BC is such that in just one year everyone would have turn their lights off for 6 hours a day to power those 4000 households and in four years time everyone would have to leave their lights off permanently. Recycling is also futile. A British study revealed that one new citizen via the maternity ward or the airport wipes out 80 years of responsible re-cycling. I could go on. You get the point Mr. Hazell.

No, no. The point is not to quit recycling. Or to abandon the search for more efficient technologies. Or not to make more efficient and rational land use decisions. Etc. Etc. Rather, it is to point out that without population stabilization all of those worthy goals are pointless. That is why the Sierra Club of the United States was committed to it for most of its recent history and why one third of its current membership are trying to restore that commitment, led by a group of Sierrans called SUSPS (Sierrans for US Population Stabilization).

But I doubt, if you are a typical Canadian like me, that you will be interested in rocking the boat.

So get back to your mop and whistle your happy tune. Who knows, maybe Walt Disney was right, if you wish something to be true and avoid nasty thoughts and phrases like "over-population", "immigration", "limited carrying capacity" and "over-shoot" your Al Gore fantasy just might come true. By living greener lifestyles and vesting our hopes in renewable technologies, you might wish away the fact that there are twice as many Canadians here now as when I was born and pretend that doesn't make a whit of difference to the habitat they're destroying. Just whisper the magic words, “Aba-ka-dabra, Smart Growth!”, and presto! Done!

PS. Is there a technological fix for an extinct species?

Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC.

Sierra Club Ignores the Smoke of Rampant Growth

My somewhat caustic approach can be attributed in part to a sense of urgency that most environmentalists apparently don't share. I believe we are almost out of time, and I have lost patience with dissemblers.

When I am in a house that has caught fire I am not apt to say "Gee, I think perhaps we should maybe call the Fire Department, don't ya think?". I am more inclined to shout "Call 911 you Sierra Club idiots!" Anything to stop them from continuing to robotically polish the wood furniture and calling that valuable work while the smoke envelopes us.

It was the late great David Brower, three time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Sierra Club pioneer who said that overpopulation was the major cause of America's environmental ruin, and that since immigration was the main factor in overpopulation, "it had to be addressed". Even in North America. Even in the politically correct community where I live. Somebody has to mention the nasty "I" word. Somebody has to call the Fire Department. And somebody has to tell them to stop pissing around with the furniture polish, get the hell out and start fighting the fire of runaway population growth! This role is not the role of a politician or a salesman. It is the role of someone who must wear the mantle of unpopularity.

Examples of "polishing the furniture":

Investing great time and hope in Sustainable Energy options. The Jevons Paradox dashes all of these hopes. Technological efficiencies liberate cash, and this cash is spent on yet more consumption. When the efficiency of air conditioners improved by 17% consumers bought 36% more air conditioners. When the fuel economy of the average car improved 30% American drivers responded by driving bigger vehicles greater distances. And thanks to population growth there are 130 million more cars on the road. Fuel efficiency in aircraft improved by more than 40% since 1978 but over all fuel consumption rose by 150% since then because of the explosive growth in air traffic encouraged by cheaper transportation costs. Energy use per unit of US GNP has fallen 50% since 1975 after enormous efficiencies were effected after the Arab Oil Embargo. Yet total US energy consumption rose by 40% The name of the game is to reduce total consumption, not improve technological efficiencies. And without stabilizing population, all benefits from efficiencies are erased. The 900 solar farm in Sarnia will produce only enough energy to satisfy 23 days of BAU immigration. Energy gains from renewable technologies are erased by economic growth (population times per capita consumption)

Nature reserves and much vaunted park dedications. None are secure from p pulation and economic growth. Even Yosemite was invaded by logging and mining interests by the stroke of a Congressional pen. A protected park in Costa Rica was similarly violated. Nature Conservancy admits having to take people to court for trepass etc etc. There are no sanctuaries from population and development pressure. And it must be remembered that in the US 40% of all listed mammals are not even found in refuges, and it is in these unprotected lands that 40% of all housing units will be found in the United States by 2030.

Good works. The typical Sierran is like a singing janitor who keeps mopping the floor---doing good works---but blissfully and willfully ignoring the fact that the tap (population growth) is on and water is pouring across it. Then there is the happy fool of a cabin maid on the Titanic as the ship is badly listing, whistlling as she tidies things up. She feels good about her environmentalism, because she is removing anything that isn't recyclable from the cabin. Criminal negligence, the deliberate neglect and avoidance of population growth by environmental organizations despite its obvious correlation to GHG emissions and biodiversity loss, cannot be forgiven by their inconsequential involvement with "good works". The Moonies do "good works". The BDM (Hitler Youth) did good works building trails and doing conservation work. Capone did charity work too. Sorry. You can't buy salvation with good works.

Sustainable Living Practices. Of course it was Al Gore in his Inconvenient Truth who made the absurd statement that we could through the individual choices we make as consumers in the things we buy, the electricity we use or the cars we drive for example that we could reduce our carbon emissions to zero. But Gore did not appreciate that green consumers can never reduce their consumption to zero, and that an increase in the number of the greenest consumers is going to increase total consumption. GHG emissions will have to be cut 60% just to keep pace with population increases in the next half century. And in the UK it was discovered that one new citizen, born or admitted as an immigrant erased 80 lifetimes of responsible recycling.

Polishing the furniture while the house is burning down. Welcome to the Green Fantasy World, where feeling good about yourself is more important than actually addressing the root cause of the problem---over-population, just as Jacques Cousteau said.

It's over-population stupid!

Tim Murray,
Quadra Island, BC

Philippe Legrain's puerile veneration of globalization and free market economics is, for its outrageous simplicity, alluring to some in the same way that Ayn Rand's uncompromising fantasies drew a cult following. His call for open borders is so boldly brazen that it disarms many of his incredulous audience in the manner that Milton Friedman or Julian Simon did theirs. But a glance at any best sellers' list will reveal that is typically those who stake out extreme and provocative positions without solid empirical foundation who attract readers and the favour of publishers. While those authors and commentators who are better informed of a broader and deeper knowledge, on the other hand, often lose their market edge because a more balanced account is inherently less exciting.

In fact, in his book review of Immigrants:Your Country Needs Them, Australian critic Mark O'Connor characterized Philippe Legrain as essentially "ill-read", "a rhetorician, not a thinker", who in his euphoric assessment of a world where mobility was unimpeded "ignores inconvenient issues of resources, spaces, greenhouse emissions and environmental degradation."

Like a tireless door-to-door salesman of a quack remedy that subsequent lab analysis would show to be lethal and fraudulent in its claims, the infamous open-borders advocate, economist and journalist Philippe Legrain knocked on French Canada's door recently to speak to the biweekly magazine L'actualitie. The message was practically the same one he has given to the Economist, the Guardian, the Financial Times, The Times, Prospect Magazine, to the BBC and many foreign publications.

The pitch is: “Hey Canada (or America, or Australia etc.). Not enough water? Here's the medicine. Open your borders to limitless millions! Housing costs too high? Open your borders to limitless millions! Almost out of agricultural land? Open your borders to limitless millions! Educational institutions and medical system over-burdened? You guessed it. Open your borders to limitless millions! It's good for them and good for you too.”

Actually Legrain did not say that verbatim, but in so many words. For one thing he has no evident concern or awareness of any ecological consequences from his miracle cure. It is enough for him that bringing down national borders would allegedly double the size of the world economy. The effect of this on greenhouse emissions or biodiversity is simply not on his radar screen. But it is on the radar screen of the Royal Academy of Sciences who according to Monbiot has virtually stated that economic growth will have to be halted if we are to escape that critical two degree rise in global temperatures. Clearly Legrain's economic utopia would be an environmental dystopia.

When asked by L'Actualitie why we should abolish all borders and open all countries to freedom of movement, Legrain responded with the same line that he had given the New York Times six months before in October. "It is first of all a moral question. We should end this global apartheid by which we set the door wide open for rich and well-educated foreigners but close them for poor ones thereby forcing them to stay in their poverty. It is also a humanitarian question", in that according to the IMF immigrants send $300 billion in remittances to their home countries, "which go straight to the pockets of local people." But unfortunately he doesn't appreciate that from the pockets of local people it goes straight back into the pockets of corrupt policemen and officials as bribes. Remittances take the edge off the worst of third world poverty and emigration allows incompetent regimes to export their poor, providing a safety valve so that corruption and overpopulation never gets solved. How many potential Nelson Mandelas and Lech Walesas would be lost to emigration under a global free movement protocol?

I must confess that I find it somewhat galling when an economist of any stripe should protest like Legrain that "it is abhorrent that the rich and the educated are allowed to circulate around the world more or less freely, while the poor are not." Mr. Legrain should know that there are lots of things that the rich can do with their money that the poor can't in the marvelous free-market economy that he champions. They all can drive hummers if they want to, for example. Does that mean that, as a matter of equity, every one in Bangladesh should be afforded a hummer? Migration has vast ecological consequence too. If Mr. Legrain wants to vent his closet socialist conscience, why doesn't express abhorrence over the low wages that his unskilled immigrants are making everywhere in the developed world?

"A conservative position that encourages free trade and restricted immigration is not contradictory. Simply put, importing tomatoes is not the same thing as importing people.

Harvard economist George J. Borjas

Thomas Sowell also stated that people are not commodities, as commodities are consumed, while people generate more people, and immigrants impose a cost on the country. In his Canadian interview, Legrain argued that immigrants consume goods and services and generate economic activity, making the U.S. an economic powerhouse. What he did not mention, however, was the 2004 report by the Centre for Immigration Studies that showed that illegal immigrants consumed $10.6 billion more in services than they paid in taxes. Nor did he comment on the 1997 metastudy by the National Research Council that concluded that while immigration raises over-all output, the aggregrate additional net benefit to the U.S. native-born is nugatory--wiped out by taxpayer funded transfer payments to immigrants.

As for Britain, a House of Lords committee reported on April 1st of 2008 that ten years of record immigration has produced virtually no benefits to the country. The report argues that the 6 billion pounds that foreign workers supposedly add to the nation's wealth each year must be balanced against their use of services like health and education and the growth of the population. The error of conventional government assessments of migrant benefits to economic growth (15-20%), according to Professor David Coleman of Oxford University, is that it has excluded costs from crime, security, race relations and imported ailments like TB. And, according to visiting Professor Richard Pearson of the University of Sussex Centre for Migration Research, "these migrants are likely to be displacing, and reducing the incentive on employers to recruit and train low-skilled, indigenous workers."

If these are the results of a Labour government that critics say has lost control of the nation's borders, issued too many work permits and should not have exposed the labour market to Eastern Europe, what would have been the result if they had followed Philippe Legrain's formula for success and thrown open the borders entirely? One pill makes you sick so you take three or four more?

Legrain of course, can no doubt conjure up a study to show wage improvement in the wake of mass immigration, but other studies by more eminent economists like Borjas can counter them. But can't Philippe Legrain be honest here? Does he really believe that big employers lobby governments for more immigration so that they can raise wage levels? Is that why Bill Gates went to Congress to ask to loosen H-1B visa regulations and raise caps, as a philanthropic measure to improve the wages of IT workers in America? Give us a break, Mr. Legrain. It is as Garrett Hardin said, "immigrant labour pauperizes local labour." What is most sickening about Legrain's argument is that he presents it mostly as a cause of social justice for the global poor while it is in fact, really a cause to bring cheap labour to the developed world and improverish its indigenous working class. As socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont observed, five million middle income workers in America have been caught in a vice between out-sourcing and cheap immigrant labour and have dropped into the ranks of poverty during the Bush era. Even more sickening than Legrain's hypocrisy though has been the collusion of leftists and liberals in it. Imagine if Charles Dickens had teamed up with the Manchester school. Contemporary leftists are not internationalists. They are globalists, unwitting collaborators in the pyramid scam of runaway population growth that cloaks the naked profit motive under the attractive guise of cultural diversity and human rights.

Now for the old chestnut. The one Legrain repeats ad nauseum in countless interviews and essays in reference to several countries. The famous "they do work that locals won't do" routine. For example, he recently stated in his blog that "with France's growth slowing, its sclerotic labour market could do with an infusion of foreign blood—of hard-working , enterprising people who are willing to do the jobs that French people can't or won't." There is always an inference that native workers aren't hard-working, or "enterprising", and as far as a "sclerotic" labour market in a slow growing France is concerning, there is an alternative translation for that. The workers of France are benefiting from a "tight" labour market in a "stable" economy. As one should know, but many including Legrain apparently don't, there is no such thing as jobs that Frenchmen, Americans, Canadians or Australians "won't do". Merely jobs they are unwillingly to do at the wages offered. The phrase "they do work that locals won't do" evidences equivalent ignorance to other phrases that have consigned to the lexicographical museum like "I drive better when I'm drunk" or "my wife had it coming."

Legrain's open borders recipe, aside from presenting monstrous adjustment problems for recipient countries, would also pose problems for poor countries, one would think. When asked by L'Actualitie if they would not be crippled by an exodus of doctors and engineers, Legrain was cavalier and dismissive. Émigré doctors would only meet 12% of current needs if they were forced to return now, so therefore it was better just to assist developing countries in training more doctors. And then what? So they in turn could leave for the First World? Is that Legrain's vision? India and Africa as a big medical school for the West?

Philippe Legrain is not very re-assuring about terrorism either. Since "99.99% of immigrants aren't terrorists" then border controls don't make sense as a deterrent to terrorists. OK, Mr. Legrain, since 99.99% of all air-line passengers aren't bombers, on any plane that you are boarding, we won't bother to do any security screening or luggage checks.

It would seem reasonable, would it not, that when toying with the fate of 6.7 billion people and 194 plus countries that before unleashing a sweeping change of Philippe Legrain's prescription we first test the waters by leaving one or two nations defenceless against incoming hordes. Actually the experiment has already been conducted. Does anybody know how things have working out for Tibet the last little while? How have the ethnic Serbians made out in Kosovo? How did the Poles like their open borders in September of 1939? Must admit, those hard-working enterprising Germans did work that the Poles would not do.

Legrain doesn't favour a kind of incremental, phased relaxation of borders, but rather the shock therapy of an immediate global village.

I think it prudent then, despite Legrain's assurances, to first test the market as it were by granting an unlimited number of visas to all third word economists who wish live and work alongside Mr. Legrain in the UK. With an economist coming out of every manhole cover to bid for jobs as columnists with the Guardian and the Times and so forth, and as commentators on the BBC, Philippe Legrain could test his hypothesis that immigrants raise the wages of local labour.

If this pilot project was pronounced a success and British sovereignty subsequently dissolved, then I could look forward to moving into Legrain's London flat, with a host of my relatives, who have always fancied living in the great city. Even if it contained only the 76 square metres of space that the average British dwelling does, I am sure Mr. Legrain, as a matter of logical consistency, could have no objection to moving over and making room for us. After all, a man who favours open borders can hardly oppose open houses.

Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC
28 March 2008

Rupert Murdoch's Australian Newspaper in an article Migrant workers scoring top pay" has made use of figures which which purportedly show that immigrants earn more, rather than less than their Australian equivalents, , as if to answer any possible objection to Australia's current record high rate of immigration.

SKILLED temporary migrant workers are earning on average $15,000 more than their Australian counterparts, undermining trade union claims that the system is being abused to undercut local wages.

Figures obtained by The Australian show that holders of 457 visas, which allow temporary skilled migrants to work in Australia for up to four years, are earning more than the average salaries of local workers across all industries in which they are employed.

The figures have reignited the debate over the use of foreign workers, with the Opposition seizing on the data as "dispelling the myth" that temporary skills workers are driving down wages, but unions and the Rudd Government insist that many visa holders are exploited by unscrupulous employers.

Of course, notwithstanding these purportedly average figures, there still remains many documented examples of ruthless exploitation of immigrant workers, and their depressing on the value of the labour of many in Australia's current workforce and this remains a valid reason to oppose high immigration.

However, even if it were not true as the figures in the Australian purport to show, the case against immigration should not begin and end with that question alone, rather it should most of all concern what serves the best interests of the existing inhabitants of this country. Displacing existing workers by immigrant workers, whether those workers are paid more or less is not in their interests.

If we are to believe the free market economists, then the unstated conclusion to be drawn these statistics is that immigrant workers are paid better because they are more productive and skilled than their Australian counterparts.

However, other factors may help increase the amounts that skilled immigrants earn. One would be that they are inherently more mobile and hence more able to move to where better wages are on offer.

At this moment in time the Australian economy is hardly a typical economy by world standards. The ever-escalating level of exports of our finite endowment of mineral resources as well as the subdivision of bushland and agricultural land for residential development means that there is a wealth available for those with the niche skills required for this economic activity that would not be available in other economies. It should not be altogether surprising if much of this finds its way into pockets of skilled migrants, but this economic activity is unsustainable in the longer the longer term, and the wealth generated is at an unacceptable cost to the environment and future generations. Without these distortions in the Australian economy the picture would be very different.

Wherever the ultimate truth may lie in claims and counterclaims about relative wage levels in Australia's highly dysfunctional economy, this article is typical of the shallow self-serving treatment given to the complex and socially divisive issue of immigration by the Murdoch press. Amongst the many other questions not even acknowledged here or in any of its other pro-population-growth propaganda is the well understood effect of population growth adding to housing hyper-inflation, traffic congestion, destruction of bio-diversity, water shortages, demands for services that our governments can no longer meet and the ongoing decline in our quality of life.

See also Immigration myths demolished by economics journalist, Immigration as the quick fix

If the Canada of 1965 could have been preserved in aspic its medicare system might have been viable. But how is it now to contend with the massive numbers who make major claims on hospital services? Tim Murray, Director of Immigration Watch Canada describes the strains that runaway immigration levels have placed on Canada's health system.

A cynic might characterize Canada's medicare system as the universal, free, democratic and egalitarian access to a two-year waiting list. You jump the queue only if you have the bucks and the referral to jump over the 49th unless a life-threatening emergency sends you to the OR.

America's health care system on the other hand is discriminatory and expensive, but it offers immediate access to the best medical treatment in the world.

In both cases timely care for everyone is an elusive goal.

In any event Michael Moore's take on Canada is superficial, euphoric and unrealistic. New technology, abuse and the insatiable demands of an ever expanding clientele of elderly relatives sponsored by Third World immigrants is breaking the bank. It has been calculated that each sponsored immigrant in that age group will cost the Australian medical system $250,000. Since roughly 75% of Canadian immigrants and refugees, drawn from largely "non-traditional" sources, in fact consist of their unskilled dependent children, a terrifying portrait of the toll that Canadian immigration policy is taking on medicare could no doubt be drawn.

A recent article featured in the London Free Press (Thursday, March 13, 2008 "Hospitals forecast deficits") recognized population growth as one principal reason why the Canadian health system was on the brink of deficit financing, with half of Ontario's hospitals facing service cuts to meet the legal requirement for a balanced budget. Seventy percent of Canada's population growth is driven by immigration.

It was economist Milton Friedman who commented a decade ago that "It's just obvious that you can't have free immigration and a welfare state." As Robert Rector explained, to be properly understood, Friedman's observation should be viewed as applicable to the entire redistributive system of benefits, subsidies and services that lower income groups disproportionately enjoy at the expense of higher income groups.

Unfortunately this superstructure of benefits and services rests not only on an economic foundation but a cultural one as well. A people that is very much alike is more inclined to trust one another, and this trust translates into a willingness to vote for redistributive policies. But we are no longer a mostly ethnically homogeneous society with a shared respect for institutions and a shared sense of civic obligation. When a significant portion of the population is from another hemisphere, another culture or even another generation with different values, the welfare state is perceived as an unlocked candy store with services to be exploited to the maximum.

Redistributive policies like medicare are inversely correlated to cultural diversity. Rather than confront this reality, Canadian leftists demand yet more financial IV injections into the morbid body of the health care system. They refuse to acknowledge that even the Swedish Social Democrats, their role models, were forced to discover the "Laffer curve". That is, push the tax rate up beyond a certain level and tax revenues fall in response. Tax payers will not keep working and producing if they can't keep enough of their income. There are limits to what can be funded.

The Canadian model is not sustainable. It works only if there is enough public money to fund it and not enough patients with doctors to help them abuse it.

Those days are gone forever