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Shkruar nga Allister Heath
Matthew Yglesias' "One Billion Americans" thesis - tripling the US population to maximize global welfare - is rapidly losing support on the pro-capitalist right...
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak may have defeated the rebels in his own party. But his was a "Pyrrhic Victory", which cannot save his government. Rwanda's bill won't stop illegal immigrants from landing in the country, let alone convince angry voters to trust the Conservatives again.
The conservatives who prevented Sunak from toughening his bill have shown that they are unable to understand the magnitude of the challenge that mass immigration, legal and illegal, poses to the Western order in the 21st century.
The majority of voters in Britain and across Europe believe that immigration is at very high levels. However, there will be pressure for the numbers to rise even further, especially given the steep decline in fertility in the West.
Over the coming decades, tens if not hundreds of millions of people may try to leave Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa to escape poverty, war and chaos. This would collapse almost all host societies and impose a complete overhaul of the West's approach to economic immigration, integration, asylum and refugees.
Whether we like it or not, border walls will be erected and international law will lose its function. Politicians unable or unwilling to adapt are likely to disappear from the public scene, starting with Sunak and Joe Biden in November, and continuing with the leaders of nearly every European country, including Olaf Scholz in Germany and Emmanuel Macron in France.
Mainstream politicians need to deal with these issues in a civilized manner, otherwise really nasty characters will rise to power. Governments should become much more selective about who they grant citizenship to, the number of immigrants should be significantly reduced.
In this context, the Rwanda Plan is highly inappropriate. It maintains our membership of the European Convention on Human Rights. I don't question any of the post-World War II refugee conventions, well-understood but outdated agreements at the time they were signed, that today prevent governments from choosing who can settle in their countries.
Nor does it do anything to make the Home Office and its tendency to lose track of illegal immigrants work again, nor the fact that our courts and administrative machinery are so weak in interpreting the law.
On immigration, I have long been positioned on the liberal wing of the conservative movement. I have been a supporter of modern British identities, and a multi-faith society. I am amazed by the impressive success of so many well-integrated, patriotic immigrants and their children.
And it is clear that the British model has been much better than the French or German one to integrate newcomers. We should be proud of our multi-ethnic Britain, our Hindu Prime Minister and the great progress we have made in the fight against racism.
But now I also believe that the level of annual immigration has become unsustainable, and certain groups have become dangerously isolated from the rest of the nation.
Extremism is on the rise and if we are to maintain our social cohesion, a much greater scrutiny of who we let in and who we don't is needed.
The growing influence of the far left on our culture has had disastrous consequences. If Britain is seen today as a bad "colonialist" state, then why would anyone want to integrate here? The immigration success stories here have one factor in common: belief in the British dream, in a meritocratic system where hard work, family values and dedication to education can allow anyone to rise to the top.
But this is inconsistent with critical race theory. Far-left ideologues' fixation with identity politics, quotas, pitting one group against another, dividing the world into "oppressors" and "oppressed" and discriminating against white people is precisely designed to undermine the successful model. of British integration.
It denigrates Britishness and magnifies differences. It is soft on Islamic extremism. Such an approach has helped fuel a wave of anti-Semitism. The economic case for mass emigration has also been weakened, compared to the selective acceptance of those with a high yield. The old approach has supported GDP growth, but failed to increase the level of GDP per capita. The basic claim that immigration would increase productivity growth has proven to be false.
Many immigrants are not adding to the labor force. On the contrary, they are coming here for family reunification or to study, categories that are being abused a lot.
Regarding economic immigration, we should focus on those who come from any country in the world, but who are most likely to be contributors to the enrichment of our country. It should become a rare practice and provide social housing to immigrants. We must move to a contributory welfare state, where welfare is given only to those who have contributed for years.
The government has marketed that it is easier to import workers from abroad than to face the fact that millions of citizens are dependent on social assistance and suffer from low skills relative to the labor market and depleted social capital.
Our politicians also do not prefer to raise the salaries of social service workers and choose to take workers from other countries who pay them less, thus saving money and refusing to train doctors. Given our problematic planning laws that prevent more house building, current levels of emigration are fueling a housing crisis.
During the years 2022-20023, 234,400 new homes were built in Britain. Net emigration to June 2023 was 672,000, with the majority settling in England. The housing crisis is escalating rapidly due to high levels of emigration and a low rate of new home construction.
This crisis is hitting young people in particular. The German Institute IZA found that every 1 percent annual increase in the number of immigrants to Switzerland increased house prices by 4.3-5.9 percent. Even Elon Musk, who generally supports liberal policies on immigration, now believes that the housing stock - and therefore America's population of 333 million - cannot in practice grow by more than 1-2 percent a year.
Matthew Yglesias' "One Billion Americans" thesis - tripling the US population to maximize global welfare - is rapidly losing support on the pro-capitalist right.
The housing crisis has created a new generation of communists, and until we double or even triple housebuilding, that means mass immigration is no longer compatible with conservatism.
For conservatives and centre-right parties everywhere, this is a Darwinian moment: they must tighten restrictions on migration, legal and illegal, or face extinction from the political scene. / Adapted "Pamphlet" from " Daily Telegraph "
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