If politicians don’t include immigration numbers in their platforms, how can voters make their voices heard? Established theory explains why the pressure for faster population growth, driven by a minority that benefits commercially, is much more effective than the pressure against population growth from a majority that bears the costs.
James Q Wilson[1] classified four types of politics depending on whether the benefits and costs of policies were concentrated or diffuse, and Gary Freeman,[2] attempted to apply this model to immigration politics. In this way, Freeman came to the conclusion that immigration has become entrenched in systems where its benefits are narrowly focused but the costs that it imposes are diffuse (and therefore not easily identified by the public that is paying for them).
In a 2002 thesis called, The Growth Lobby in Australia and its Absence in France, I used Freeman's theoretical model, which allowed me to hypothesize that the benefits of immigration-fed population growth were concentrated in Australia but the costs were diffuse. Because of this, there was an active growth lobby in Australia which was used to reaping immigration-related benefits and which exerted pressure on Government to make sure these benefits kept coming. This lobby was centered in firms speculating in land and in developing land, and in the construction and home-building industries. These industries were also involved in financing development, and other industries relied on them, upstream and downstream. In contrast, the costs of immigration-fed population growth were borne by the general public and were diffuse and not easily spotted as coming from immigration. For instance, people often assumed that the population was growing rapidly because Australians were living longer and having babies. They were unaware of the role immigration played in accelerating Australia's population growth, because they were not informed. Because of this pattern of immigration's concentrated benefits and diffuse costs, Australian Governments tended to respond to the loud and organised growth lobby, which wanted high immigration, rather than to the general public which often did not want it, but which did not have the means to communicate this widely or forcefully, and could not thereby attract like-thinkers and organise against it.
Obviously more people are somewhat aware of what is going on now, 23 years later, as immigration numbers have skyrocketed, bringing widespread costs that few can overlook. The growth lobby, however, has managed to really stigmatise any objection to immigration. Despite the rise of the internet, which allows some degree of communication through social media, it is still very difficult for ordinary people to organise. Concerns about internet privacy, anonymous high-rise living, the decline of the local phone book, the disuse of letterboxes, and the constant reshuffling of people and neighborhoods, in order to squeeze more people in, have made it difficult to stay connected with family or even reach out to neighbors—those most likely to share your values and concerns.
Simultaneously, the growth lobby has mobilized realtors, solicitors, immigration agents, and sectors like universities to leverage the internet for attracting property investors globally, while also fast-tracking immigrants as buyers and renters for both new and off-plan properties. The capacity for commercial beneficiaries to swell and accelerate immigration streams via the internet is marked. So we are really up against it.
The costs to Australians of mass immigration-fed population growth are now so egregious that ordinary people are finally managing to organise. At the end of this month, for the first time, there will be marches against immigration in every state in Australia. Predictably, and disquietingly, there is a campaign now in the mainstream media and among influencers in the social media, to frighten people off from marching by spreading a message that NeoNazis and White Australia groups are behind the march, and that anyone attending is likely to be tagged as racist by association, and/or suffer some form of violence by these groups or groups demonstrating against the anti-immigrationists.
We can see from the extreme and still-growing rates of immigration, despite increasing resentment among the public, that there is a determination on the part of the beneficiaries to continue to get what they want. There is a lot at stake, in a debt-ridden economy, and the growth lobby has never demonstrated much concern for the general public. It seems obvious to me that the immigrationist governments and industries, who are so well-represented in mainstream media, are capable of causing violence, either by attracting it or sowing it. Their talent for whipping up hysteria about racism among so-called 'Progressive' groups is likely to present a real threat to public safety.
It is interesting to see, from comments online, that many people are neither swayed nor impressed by these threats, and there are a number of sincere attempts to argue against the hysteria. I have embedded one such attempt by Isaac Butterfield.
I personally find it sad that there is much less concern expressed these days about the serious and ongoing loss of native habitat and fauna due to population growth and expansion. I guess this is a reflection of how much our way of life has changed, in a manner that excludes contact and awareness of nature and other creatures. A focus on economics-ideology has shrunk our vocabularies and our ability to define our problem to its true extent.
NOTES
[1] Wilson, J.Q., ed., The Politics of Regulation, Harper, New York, 1980, "The analysis in this section builds on the framework devised by James Q. Wilson that derives four types of politics from whether the benefits and costs of policies are concentrated or diffuse: client (cb,dc), interest group (cb,cc), majoritarian (db,dc), and entrepreneurial (db,cc)."
[2] Freeman, Gary, Immigrant Labor and Racial Conflict in Industrial Societies (1979)
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