The Price of European Immigration
By Fjordman
In his 2008 book Et Delt Folk (“A Nation Divided”), The
Danish historian and writer Morten Uhrskov Jensen carefully went through
publicly available sources. He demonstrated that the opening up of his
country for mass immigration was arranged by just part of the
population, sometimes in the face of considerable popular opposition.
Roughly speaking, those representing the political and media
establishment and the upper classes were in favor of open borders,
whereas those from the lower classes were often opposed. This divide is
viewed by those from the upper segments of society as caused mainly by
racism, prejudice, ignorance and xenophobia.
Since the educated classes enjoyed a virtual hegemony over public
debate, they were able to define all opposition as hate and intolerance,
exemplified by people such as Pia Kjærsgaard of the Danish People’s
Party. The well-to-do themselves
rarely lived in areas with many immigrants and could afford to move, at
least for a while, if that was needed. They focused on the abstract and
allegedly humanitarian aspects of mass migration.
Immigrants are simply referred to as “new countrymen,” who as if by
magic always seem to enrich the natives with their presence. In Denmark,
multiculturalists have successfully managed to establish the neologism nydansker or “new Danes,” a vibrant new breed of people currently displacing the tired and boring “old Danes.”
For poorer people, immigration was a concrete issue, as immigrants
moved into their neighborhoods and went to school with their children.
To put it bluntly, for those with money, globalization initially meant
that they could travel on holidays to exotic lands and treat the world
as their playground. For those who were less well off, it meant that the
entire world suddenly moved into their street and took over their
children’s local playground.
When the Titanic during her maiden voyage across the
Atlantic Ocean struck an iceberg just before midnight on 14 April 1912,
the first people who could see the water pouring in were the third-class
passengers who happened to be situated closest to the waterline.
Meanwhile, the richest passengers at the top were drinking fine cognac
long after the ship had started sinking. They didn’t realize what was
going on for quite some time, because they were further removed from the
physical problem. The poor passengers still unfortunately suffered the
highest fatality rates, because the wealthy benefitted from having
privileged access to the lifeboats.
We see the same phenomenon on display today, on a much larger scale.
Having Islamophobia in Europe today is just as rational as having
icebergophobia on board the Titanic in 1912.
Uhrskov Jensen in 2012 published another book, Indvandringens Pris
(“The Price of Immigration”) about how much money non-European mass
immigration costs his native Denmark. His conclusion is that this cost
is great in terms of welfare payments and rising crime combined with
declining efficiency and technological innovation.
He shows through carefully researched statistics that only certain
Asian immigrants are able to keep up with northern Europeans in the
educational system. A few skilled immigrants from India or elsewhere can
compete, but mainly those from East Asia: Japanese, Koreans, Chinese,
and to some extent Vietnamese. All other non-Western immigrants show
lower levels of skill and competence than Europeans, many of them a lot
lower.
It should be mentioned here that these numbers correlate quite well
with average IQ, where a few other Asians can compete with Europeans,
but primarily East Asians. Other ethnic groups cannot do so. Although it
has become taboo to say this in the modern Western world, it is
well-documented fact that IQ correlates well with economic level, for
individuals as well as for nations. The scholar Charles Murray has
written much about this.
Former professor Helmuth Nyborg
at Aarhus University in Denmark has conducted controversial research on
the subject of the genetic inheritance of intelligence. His conclusion
is that today’s mass immigration of non-Europeans will lead to an
overall marked decline in the average intelligence of the population,
and by extension a significant decline in social and economic
competence, scientific progress, as well as technological innovation.
For decades Westerners have been told that immigration from less
developed Third World countries is “good for the economy” and will “pay
for future pensions.” Morten Uhrskov Jensen proves conclusively that
this claim is fundamentally wrong, not just regarding Denmark or
Scandinavia but for other Western countries, too.
Certain private companies may enjoy short-term benefits by having
access to cheap labor and borderless export markets. Socialist parties
can cynically import a reliable voter base of backward peoples who
overwhelmingly vote for left-wing parties so they can receive generous
welfare payments from the high tax payments extracted from the majority
population, essentially forcing the white natives to fund their own
colonization by foreign peoples.
For the country as a whole, however, non-European mass immigration
will in the long run turn out to be an unmitigated social and economic
disaster. The direct and indirect costs of today’s immigration policies
through rising crime, increased corruption and higher welfare costs plus
declining competitiveness, innovation and genetic intelligence add
escalating costs to countries already in trouble due to rising deficits
and mushrooming debt.
A Danish think tank has estimated that the net cost of immigration is
as much as 50 billion kroner every year, and those were cautious
estimates. A study from Denmark found that every second immigrant from
the Third World – especially from Muslim countries – lacked the
qualifications for even the most menial jobs on the labor market.
An ever-growing group of non-Western immigrants in Norway is dependent on welfare.
This was the conclusion of a study by Tyra Ekhaugen of the Frisch
Centre for Economic Research. Ekhaugen’s research contradicted the
common assertion that the labor market depends increasingly on
immigrants. The study indicated the reverse.
I have previously written about the costs of mass immigration several times, for instance in the essays When Danes Pay Danegeld: The End of the Scandinavian Model or What Does Muslim Immigration Cost Europe?
Yet Erling Lae, a politician for the Conservative Party
and then the head of the Oslo city government, warned that the city
desperately needs more immigrants and that there would be “complete
chaos” without them. In 2005, Trygve G. Nordby, who has worked for the
Socialist Left Party, as the director of the Norwegian Directorate of
Immigration (UDI), claimed that the country needed more unskilled immigrants and should actively seek them out. It later emerged that UDI under Nordby’s
rule had virtually run its own private immigration policy in violation
of national law in order to give Iraqi immigrants the right to settle in
Norway.
Journalist Halvor Tjønn from newspaper Aftenposten,
one of the few genuinely critical journalists in Norway who later
published a fairly realistic biography of Muhammed, in 2006 cited a
report from NHO, the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise. NHO warned
that the current immigration policies constitute a serious threat to the
country’s economy. Norway is one of the world’s largest exporters of
oil and natural gas due to its offshore resources in the North Sea and
elsewhere. Yet according to NHO, there is a risk that much of the profit
Norway earns from selling oil could be spent on paying welfare for its
rapidly growing immigrant population.
These warnings were left unheeded by political leaders, yet the problem hasn’t gone away. In 2012, the business daily Dagens Næringsliv
reported that researcher Erling Holmøy from Statistics Norway together
with senior advisor Birger Strøm studied how immigration affects
government budgets. They concluded that in the long run it would prove
to be very costly, stating that mass immigration bears certain
similarities to a pyramid scheme.
Author Morten Uhrskov Jensen states
that the basic trends are identical in Sweden, France, Germany and the
USA. The only reasonable conclusion to be drawn from this is, in his
view, to stop all non-Western mass immigration. Yet the Western
political elites continue to promote such mass immigration, in spite of
mounting evidence that this is greatly harmful to their own countries.
This dangerous stubbornness could be due to ideological blindness, or
may be because the political elites see their positions, prestige and
personal privileges tied to maintaining the status quo.
In the end, the historian Uhrskov Jensen fears that only a massive traumatic
event or a major shock to the system can change the direction the
Western world is currently headed and reestablish reasonable and
sensible immigration policies that are in line with the long-term
interests of the European majority population.
